He spoke for the first time when getting out of the car. “Let that policeman go,” he said, very certain that nobody would believe the constable’s bizarre story. “He was only doing his duty.”
General Zia went straight to his study, sent for his stenographer and dictated two appointment letters. Then he picked up the phone and called a lieutenant general in charge of the military operations. After long apologies for waking him up in the middle of the night, he askrd the Lieutenant General to relieve General Akhtar of his duties.
“I would like you to take charge now. I want you personally to go through all the files on all the suspects. I want you to visit every single interrogation centre General Akhtar is running and I want you to report back directly to me.”
As General Beg set out to take charge from General Akhtar, General Zia made the last telephone call of the night.
“Yes, sir.” General Akhtar was awake and expecting a thank-you call from General Zia.
“Thank you, Akhtar,” General Zia said. “I have no words to show my gratitude. This is not the first time you have saved my life.”
“I was doing my duty, sir.”
“I have decided to promote you. Four stars.”
General Akhtar didn’t believe what he was hearing. Would General Zia relinquish his post as the Chief of the Army? Was General Zia retiring and moving to Mecca? General Akhtar didn’t have to wait long to find out. “I have appointed you the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee. In a way, I have appointed you my boss…”
General Akhtar tried to intervene in a pleading voice. “Sir, my work at the agency is not finished yet. The Americans are talking to the Soviets behind our back…”
A life of glorified bureaucratic tedium flashed in front of his eyes. He would have three adjutants, one each from the air force, navy and army, but no power over any of the three institutions. He would have his own flagged convoy but nowhere to go, except the inauguration of yet another extension to some housing scheme for army officers. He would stand at the head of every reception line ever organised for every second-rate dignitary visiting from every Third World country. Instead of running his intelligence agency he would be sitting at the head of an outfit as ceremonial as the crown of a fighting cock.
“This is life, Akhtar, the work will go on. I have asked General Beg to take charge for now.”
“I would like to request a proper handover…” General Akhtar made a last attempt to hold on to his safe houses, his tapes, his network of spies. Everything that gave him his powers was being taken away from him and he was being put behind a cage — a golden cage, but a cage nonetheless.
“You have earned it, Akhtar,” General Zia said. “You have really earned the fourth star.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The fort gates fly open, the jeep carrying us sails through the security cordons, salutes are offered and accepted. It’s only when the driver asks my permission to turn on the radio that the facts of my new life begin to sink in: there are no blindfolds, no handcuffs, we are free and we have a week’s leave pass before reporting back to the Academy. If this was the ending of Where Eagles Dare we would be reclining in our seats, lighting up cigars and chuckling over some predictable Nazi joke. But we are quiet; a pair of failed assassins, forgiven by the very person we set out to get. Petty deserters, a couple of kids admonished and sent home; not even worthy of being considered a threat to national security.
Our faces press against the windows of the jeep, looking out for the next milestone, examining the smoke coming out of the exhaust of overheated rickshaws, looking for objects to recognise. We are looking at the world like children on their first visit to the countryside; the khaki-covered seat between us stretches like the long list of our collective delusions.
“Are you hurting?” My attempt at starting a conversation is weak but spontaneous. I look out as I speak. A giant billboard featuring General Zia’s picture bids us a safe journey.
“No, are you?” The jeeps smells of disinfectant and Burnol, the anti-burn ointment they put on Obaid’s head.
The morning of our release the Fort had woken up in a fit of activity. A team of gardeners ran around with sprinklers, armed commandos were taking positions on the rooftop of the Palace of Mirrors. A three-star convoy came to a screeching halt on the main boulevard between the sprawling lawns.
Our saviour wears Ray-Bans and doesn’t take them off as we are hauled before him. Major Kiyani and his reformed hoodlums are nowhere in sight.
General Beg talks like a man whom destiny has chosen to do makeovers. Everything about him is shiny, new, unruffled; his impatient hands scream new beginnings.
“My plane is waiting,” he says to a colonel who seems to be the new man in charge of the place, and who also seems to have more medals on his chest than brain cells. “This place has been mismanaged badly,” General Beg says, which is not supposed to be an explanation directed at us but a general declaration about the state of the nation. “You.” He points his finger at the Colonel’s chest. General Beg has obviously seen too many baseball-coach-turns-nasty movies. “You are going to clear it up. Do up the whole place. Get an architect to redesign it. Call in an interior decorator if you need to. This place needs a bit of atmosphere. At least open some parts of this thing to tourists. Why do you need the whole bloody Fort to run an investigation centre?” The Colonel takes notes like an apprentice secretary in desperate need of a permanent job. General Beg turns towards us.
“You guys are our future. You deserve better. You guys ended up here because of a bunch of inefficient idiots. All sorted now, all sorted. What a waste of time. I have to visit three cantonments today. I have my own plane waiting at the airport but still there are only so many hours in a day. Chief sends his good wishes. I’ll have those files closed. Go back and work hard. Tomorrow’s battles are won in today’s drill practice. The country needs you.”
Just like that. The country suddenly needs us.
The driver of our jeep is a soldier in uniform and wants to know our destination. I know I can trust him. “Where would you like to go today, sir?” he asks as the three-star convoy departs in a blaze of wailing sirens and commandos rushing down from the roofs. General Beg, it seems, doesn’t want to stay away from his plane for too long.
There are no signs of the underground jails, the dark dungeons, the blood-splattered ceilings, the poetry in the stinking bathrooms. There is only the smell of freshly watered grass and history turning a new page.
“Out of here,” I say.
Obaid is slumped against the glass of his window. His nostrils twitch and he chews on his broken lips; he obviously doesn’t like the Burnol smell that hangs heavy in the jeep. I rummage through my bag and offer him his bottle of Poison. He takes it with a wry smile and rolls it around in his hands as if it’s not his favourite perfume bottle but a tennis ball that I have produced to distract him from our current situation.
We are like a couple who can’t remember why they got together in the first place.
“Bannon,” he mumbles. “Do you think they caught him?”
“Are you crazy?” I sneer at him and then control myself. I don’t know why I feel I should sound polite and courteous and understanding. A newspaper hawker waves a paper at us, another picture of General Zia stares at me. “Diplomatic immunity. They’d never touch him.”