“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.
“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.
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.