The Bard of Blood (3 page)

‘Well, I wasn’t getting through. And, yes, it is that urgent.’

‘Does the prime minister want me to teach his daughter Shakespeare?’

‘No,’ Joshi replied. ‘The prime minister doesn’t have a daughter.’

‘Exactly!’ Kabir snapped. ‘Please never call me again.’

‘This is a matter of high importance, Kabir Anand.’ Joshi was beginning to lose his cool. ‘And there is a chopper at the base waiting to get you here.’

‘Tell me what it is now,’ Kabir said. ‘I don’t want to miss my favourite show on TV tonight.’

‘I’m afraid this matter can’t be discussed over the phone,’ Joshi said. ‘I will see you at the Office in a bit.’

The line went dead. Kabir turned to see the two men watching over him, blocking the door.

‘You can tell Joshi to screw himself,’ Kabir said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Kabir took a step towards the door. The men didn’t budge.

‘Sir, we have been instructed to bring you back. Now we either step out amicably, or . . .’ The other man raised a small pistol.

‘You don’t have the balls to do that,’ Kabir said.

‘It’s a dart gun,’ said the man quietly. ‘One shot, and you will be fast asleep in seconds. The choice is yours. The three of us walk out together like respectable gentlemen, or the two of us carry you out whilst you are unconscious.’

Kabir glared angrily at them.

‘After we step out of the door and fly down to Delhi,’ Kabir hissed, ‘be careful never to cross my path again—both of you!’

29 August 2014

RAW HQ, New Delhi

It was ten minutes past ten when the chopper
touched base. Kabir was reluctant to be where he was, but the little episode at the college had left
him with no choice. He didn’t know why he was being called back and wasn’t sure if he
wanted to know. He had bittersweet memories of his past life—mostly bitter, though, because of
the unceremonious exit he was handed. He promised himself to hear out what they had to say now, but
nothing more.

Earlier, the agents assigned with the task of
bringing Kabir to Delhi had planned to take him directly to the chopper that awaited him. Kabir had
insisted on going home first to shower and change before flying. The game had left him sweaty.

He had left the agents waiting outside and taken
a good forty minutes to get ready. He did this more to annoy them than anything else. He combed his
long hair back neatly, wore one of his standard white Arrow shirts with a pair of grey trousers, and
put on his only black jacket. Even though he hated to admit it to himself, his muscles had begun to
ache after playing that little bit of football.

He got into the standard-issue black Tata SUV and
the two men followed in another vehicle. He recalled the last time he had travelled to the RAW HQ.
It was a long time ago. Something he had wished to get out of his head over the past few years. His
mentor, a father figure to him, Lieutenant General Sadiq Sheikh had led him to quit the service.

The driver got out of the car and rushed to open
Kabir’s door the moment they arrived at the Wing. Kabir had already opened it himself. He
didn’t much like ceremony. The driver then went on to flash his ID at the entrance, to a guard
who unlocked the door. Once in the Wing, the driver began to instruct Kabir as to where the Chief
sat. Kabir already knew, but listened anyway and then patted him on his back gently. He walked
towards the Chief’s cabin, and found his assistant’s desk outside. Unlike those
portrayed in popular culture, the chief of this intelligence agency didn’t have a leggy lass
with a tight shirt and skirt to welcome his guests. Instead, the assistant was a rather
ordinary-looking middle-aged man, with his hair combed severely to the right, and a pencil
moustache. He looked up at Kabir and acknowledged him.

He pushed a little buzzer and said into the
microphone, ‘He’s here, sir.’

‘Send him in,’ the voice replied
immediately. Kabir was already in the process of pushing open the Chief’s door.

He entered and looked at the Chief’s cabin
with a sense of familiarity. Not much had changed. The same old yellow light, resembling that of a
five-star hotel, illuminated the room. The wooden flooring was intact. The picture of Mahatma Gandhi
hung exactly where it had the last time Kabir had seen it. There were more books this time around
and the TV was almost as large as the wooden panel on the wall. The entire office was simple yet
grand, and the Chief’s cabin stood testimony to this. Arun Joshi, who was watching the news,
made a great show of switching the TV off. He was fifty-five, dyed his wavy hair an awkward jet
black and wore a pair of silver glasses and a sharp navy blue suit. He got up swiftly and stretched
his right hand out. Kabir shook it firmly.

‘Please sit, Mr Anand.’

His voice was calm, but at the same time not one
that you’d want to disobey. Kabir sat down.

‘Would you like some tea or
coffee?’

‘Coffee,’ Kabir replied instantly.
Never refuse coffee.

The Chief pressed a button on his desk and asked
for two cups of coffee. Almost immediately, an orderly came running in with a tray with two cups of
steaming coffee. He asked Joshi if he should bring in something to eat. Joshi looked at Kabir, who
declined. Joshi thanked the orderly and sent him away, and then looking towards Kabir clasped his
hands together, making a let’s-get-down-to-business gesture.

‘I’m sorry about the little hiccups
we had earlier this evening,’ Joshi said.

‘Let’s cut to the chase
already.’

He stared at Kabir’s inscrutable face for a
moment before he broke the news to him.
Sadiq Sheikh was shot dead last night
. Kabir closed
his eyes and breathed in deeply when he heard it. His throat had gone dry all of a sudden, his
stomach lurched. A slideshow of repressed memories flashed through his mind. But his face remained
expressionless in the moments of silence that ensued. It is impossible to judge a person’s
feelings by his countenance. Joshi knew that Kabir was hurt deeply, even though his face did not
betray any such emotion.

‘Before dying,’ Joshi continued, as
he adjusted his spectacles, ‘he left a message through a concealed transmitter in his
wristwatch.’

He then went on to play the message by tapping a
button on a small Sony recorder. Kabir listened silently to the audio. There was a lot of static
throughout the recording. The voice of the killer was almost inaudible, and Sadiq’s voice
could just barely be deciphered.

Of all the wonders that I yet have
heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should
fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

And then the muffled gunshot was heard.

Act 2, Scene 2,
Julius Caesar
, Kabir
recalled instantly.

‘The bad sound quality is because of the
scramblers present in the room,’ Joshi explained. ‘The killer was careful. He suspected
Sadiq might have left his phone on in his pocket, which I’m glad he didn’t. Had he done
that instead, we wouldn’t have gotten even this piece. The phone wasn’t found on his
body anyway. The techs are still working on the other man’s voice. I’ll tell you more
about that when I get to know.’

‘Why didn’t he name his killer in the
conversation, if he was transmitting,’ Kabir asked, swallowing his coffee, in an attempt to do
something about his dry throat.

Joshi shrugged. ‘The killer would know for
certain then—that he was trying to leave us a message. He knew he was going to die and
didn’t want to take the chance of not letting his message get to us.’

Kabir just sat silently, scratching his stubble.
He couldn’t quite decide on a single emotion. Joshi continued to explain.

‘When the message popped up on our
computers this morning, it took us a while to figure out what had happened.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’
Kabir said sourly. Joshi ignored the jibe.

‘When we did figure out that Sadiq
quoted Shakespeare, we realized it was because he was trying to tell us something.’

Joshi paused. He needed to be careful how he
approached the subject from here.

He continued, ‘It’s common knowledge
in the Wing that Sadiq Sheikh had a young protégé in the Military Intelligence, who was
asked to leave due to certain circumstances that went out of hand. There are various versions of the
tale floating around. But apparently, he now teaches Shakespeare at a college in Mumbai.’

‘And why is he here now?’

‘Look, Kabir. I wasn’t Chief when you
were serving our country. I didn’t know the finer details about what happened in Balochistan
until I looked up your files and your impressive track record. Rumour has it that you turned on us
and that may have gotten Vikramjit Singh killed. But Sadiq didn’t believe that. And I believed
in Sadiq.’

Kabir cleared his throat and then looked at the
clock. It was closing in on eleven.

‘That still doesn’t answer my
question.’

‘We need your assistance,’ Joshi said
finally. ‘Four of our agents have been compromised. They were embedded in Balochistan a few
years after your incident. We use them to fund the Balochistan Liberation Army and other such
militia that are fighting for secession against the Pakistani government and the ISI.’

Kabir leaned in towards Joshi and spoke softly.
‘This is not my life any more. You all took that away from me a while back. I don’t
understand why you’re telling me all of this.’

‘I wasn’t the Chief that time,
Kabir,’ Joshi repeated.

‘I couldn’t care less,’ Kabir
said. ‘The only thing that has hurt me is the fact that Sadiq is no more. So tell me when the
funeral is, and I will be there. But that’s it. I believe we’re done here.’

‘His death is just a piece of a larger
puzzle. Don’t you want to know who may have gotten him killed?’

‘There’s nothing I can do about it.
Besides, I was told seven years ago that there are better agents than me in the game. I’m sure
you can make them do something about it.’

Kabir got up, turned and began to walk towards
the door.

‘Mullah Omar,’ Joshi said flatly. Two
dreadful words.

Kabir halted in his tracks. He stood still for a
few seconds. He turned to face Joshi, his arched eyebrows stitched together in a frown.

‘Sit down, Kabir.’

Kabir was drawn back to the chair, his body
reluctant, his mind inquisitive. He sat down.

‘The last piece of information we had about
Omar recently was that he was dead. But then again, he dies every two months,’ Joshi spat out.
‘Of course, he resides in Quetta and keeps shuffling around within Balochistan. But the last
time he made an appearance was around four years back.’

Kabir ran his hand through his long hair. Joshi
noticed the streaks of silver hair and the ashen temples.

‘It beats me,’ Kabir said.
‘Omar doesn’t give a hoot about India. He has other fish to fry. Even when I was in
Balochistan, he was busy directing the Taliban insurgency against the US-led NATO forces and the
Government of Afghanistan. When he found someone spying on him, he had him executed immediately.
Then why is he holding these guys hostage?’

Joshi nodded his head understandingly.

‘Mullah Omar is, for the lack of a better
explanation, the ISI’s puppet. His second-in-command Mullah Baradar is the one who looks after
his day-to-day affairs. They fund him and so they get him to do some of their dirty work. For
instance, Omar and Baradar had helped the ISI kill Balach Marri and Akbar Bugti in Balochistan. You
know that, of course.’

Kabir nodded. He was there when Bugti was
killed.

Balach Marri was the leader of the Balochistan
Liberation Army—the BLA—a militant organization fighting for the independence of
Balochistan from Pakistan and Iran. The BLA had been pronounced a terror organization, rather
ironically, by the Pakistani government. And Marri had been killed by the ISI and the Pakistani
military in 2007.

Akbar Bugti, too, had run a well-organized
militia against the Pakistani Army. It was on the lines of the BLA, and Pakistan believed that it
was the BLA itself. He fought for autonomy, something that cost him his life in 2006.

RAW believes that Mullah Omar played a big hand
in assisting the ISI kill these two revolutionaries.

Kabir was posted in Quetta when Bugti and his son
were killed. It was the sixth day of August. A Saturday. Kabir relived the moment day after day. He,
along with Vikramjit Singh, had spied on a special camp of the Quetta Shura, set up by Omar, which
trained terrorists and insurgents to attack Indian interests in Kashmir during that time. The day
had started off no differently. But it ended with the death of Akbar Bugti. And Vikramjit Singh. And
soon enough, that of Major Kabir Anand’s career.

‘Why he would keep our agents alive
didn’t make sense to me.’ Joshi broke Kabir out of his trance. ‘Until I got the
demands from the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid.’

‘Which are?’

‘Mullah Omar, apparently, wants us to free
four of the terrorists we have captured, in exchange for our agents.’

He held up the remote and switched the TV on. He
tapped something urgently on his laptop and a grainy video filled up the screen.

It had the four Indian men kneeling next to each
other. A turbaned man, with his face covered, stood with a rifle behind them. Not Mullah Omar, of
course. Unlike Osama bin Laden, he didn’t believe in recording his showmanship on tape.

The screen blacked out, and four names popped up:
Yasin Bhatkal, Assadullah Akhtar, Fayaz Mir, Umar Madni.
After which, there was a simple
message.

Freedom in exchange for freedom. You have ten
days.

As if it were that simple.

Joshi turned to face Kabir, who had a half-smile
on his face.

‘Freedom in exchange for freedom,’ he
repeated. ‘Omar is clearly acting as the ISI’s mouthpiece.’

Joshi nodded, poured Kabir and himself a glass of
water, and gulped his down. Kabir left his untouched.

‘I’ve had a good time catching up
with you, sir. But, unfortunately, I have a class waiting to learn how Macbeth met his
end.’

‘Macbeth has already met his end, Kabir.
But you can stop four of ours from meeting theirs.’

The words floated in the silence that ensued.

Kabir scratched some invisible lint off his
jacket, and finally asked: ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Clearly, there is a larger conspiracy at
play. The ISI is up to no good as usual, and Sadiq’s death is connected. The mole—that
my predecessor mistook you to be—is still in the agency. I want you to help me connect the
dots. There is a reason Sadiq asked for you before he died.’

‘He didn’t ask for me,’ Kabir
said, avoiding eye contact. ‘How exactly do you want me to connect the dots?’

‘I want you to meet the former Afghan head
of intelligence, who is in Mumbai currently. He’s dissatisfied with President Hamid
Karzai’s appeasement policies. Needless to say, he strongly dislikes the Pakistani government
and the ISI. His bitterness led him to quit the agency, but he still wields a lot of influence
amongst his supporters back in Afghanistan.’

‘Arifullah Umar Saleh,’ Kabir said.
‘I meet him, then what?’

‘He will tell you everything you need to
know,’ Joshi stated. ‘Omar’s location in Quetta. Omar’s camps and their
infrastructure—something Afghanistan’s current director of intelligence would deny.
Saleh is helping us settle a score, which kind of helps him settle his. Amongst other things,
he’s a good guy at heart.’