General Zia, instead of returning his salute, moves forward and put his arms around General Akhtar’s waist.
“Brother Akhtar, I want to tell you a story. I called you because I wanted to share this memory with you. When I was in high school my parents couldn’t afford a bicycle for me. I had to get a ride from a boy in my neighbourhood. And look at us now.” He moves his arm in a half-circle, pointing at the C13O and the two small Cessna planes parked on the tarmac. “We all travel in our own planes, even when we are going to the same place.”
“Allah has been kind to you,” General Akhtar says, forcing a smile. “And you have been kind to me. To us.” He looks towards General Beg whose eyes are fixed on the horizon where a small air force fighter has just taken off on a reconnaissance sortie. The plane’s mission is to search the surroundings for any natural hazards and act as a bogey target in case anyone in the area wants to take a pot shot at Pak One.
Five miles from where the generals stand, the crow hears the roar of an aeroplane approaching. Startled out of its full-stomached slumber, the crow flutters its wings in panic, then gets distracted by a mango rotting on the branch above him and decides to continue his nap for a little longer.
General Zia doesn’t notice that General Akhtar is squirming in his grip, straining to get away. He continues his reminiscence. “People always talk about the past, the good old days. Yes, those were good times, but even then there was nothing like a free ride. Every week my bicycle-owning neighbour would take me to a mango orchard near our school and wait outside while I climbed the boundary wall, went in and came back with stolen mangoes. I hope Allah has forgiven a child’s indiscretions. Look at me now, brothers. Allah has brought me to a point where I have my own ride and my own mangoes gifted by my own people. So let’s have a mango party on Pak One. Let’s bring back the good old days.”
General Beg smiles for the first time. “I am one of those unfortunate people whom Allah has not given the taste buds to enjoy the heavenly taste of mangoes. I am even allergic to the smell. But I hope you enjoy the party. There are twenty crates of them, you can take some for the First Lady as well.” He salutes and turns round to go.
“General Beg.” General Zia tries to muster up an authority that seems to be deserting him. General Beg turns back, his face patient and respectful, but his eyes hidden behind the mercury coating on his glasses. General Zia rubs his left eye and says, “Something has got into my eye. Can I borrow your sunglasses?” General Zia has his eyes fixed on General Beg’s face, waiting for the sunglasses to come off, waiting to get a good look into his eyes. He remembers the intelligence profile he had ordered before giving Beg his promotion. There was something about his taste for expensive perfumes, BMWs and Bertrand Russell. There was nothing about any allergies, nothing about mangoes and absolutely nothing about sunglasses.
Both of General Beg’s hands move in unison. His left hand removes the sunglasses and offers them to General Zia, while his right hand goes into his shirt pocket, produces an identical pair and puts them on. In the moment that his eyes are naked, General Zia discovers what he already knows: General Beg is hiding something from him.
It is General Zia’s right eye that reaches the verdict. His left eye is wandering beyond Beg, beyond the sword-wielding Shigri boy trying to suppress his grin (like father like son, General Zia thinks, no sense of occasion). In the distance the mirage of a man is running on the tarmac. The man is in uniform and he is charging towards them recklessly, breaking the security cordons, ignoring the commandos’ shouts to halt, ignoring their cocked Kalashnikovs, oblivious to the confused snipers’ itching forefingers. They would have shot him if he wasn’t wearing his major’s uniform and if he hadn’t held his hands in the air to show his peaceful intentions. General Akhtar recognises him before anybody else and raises his hand to signal to the snipers to hold their tire. The snipers keep his legs and face in their cross hairs and wait for the mad Major to make any rash moves.
General Akhtar’s relief is that of a man perched on the gallows, the rope already around his neck and a black mask about to come down on his face, the hangman adjusting the lever while saying hangman’s prayer; the man with the noose around his neck looks at the world one last time and sees a messenger on horseback in the distance, galloping towards the scene, flailing his hands in the air.
General Akhtar is relieved to see Major Kiyani.
General Akhtar isn’t sure what message Major Kiyani might have brought, but he is relieved anyway. Just at the moment when he is about to give up praying for divine intervention, his own man has come to the rescue.
General Zia, still stunned at General Beg’s smooth manoeuvre, still holding the sunglasses in his hand, gives only a casual look at the Major who has slowed down now and is approaching them like a marathon runner on his last lap. It is only when he stops a few feet away from them and salutes and General Zia, instead of hearing a solid thud of the military boot, hears the plopping sound of a Peshawan chappal striking the concrete that he looks at the Major’s feet and says, “Bloody hell, Major, why are you running around in your slippers?”
That would prove to be General Zia’s last lucid thought, his last utterance that would make any sense to his fellow travellers on Pak One.
THIRTY-FOUR
You might have seen me on television after the crash. The clip is short and everything in it is sun-bleached and faded. It was pulled after the first few news bulletins because it seemed to be having an adverse impact on the nation’s morale. You can’t see it in the clip, but we are walking towards Pak One, which is parked behind the cameraman’s back, still connected to generators and an auxiliary fuel pump, still surrounded by a group of alert commandos. Heat loops around its wings and fuel vapours are rising in whirlpools of white smoke. It looks like a beached whale, grey and alive, contemplating how to drag itself back to the sea. You can see General Zia’s flashing white teeth in the clip but you can tell immediately that he is not smiling. If you watch closely you can probably tell that he is in some discomfort. He is walking the walk of a constipated man. General Akhtar’s lips are pinched, and even though the sun has boiled everything into submission and drained all colour out of the surroundings you can see that his usually pale skin has turned a wet yellow. He is dragging his feet. General Beg is inscrutable behind his sunglasses, but when he salutes and departs, his pace is brisk. He walks like someone who knows where he is going and why You can see me only for a few seconds behind them, my head rising above their shoulders, and if you look really closely you can see that I am the only one with a smile on his face, probably the only one looking forward to the journey. My squad has already flown back on another C13O with their packed lunch of roast chicken and soft buns. I have been invited onto Pak One for a mango party. I hate mangoes but I’ll eat a few if I can see Colonel Shigri’s killer foaming at the mouth and gasping for his last breath.
The clip also doesn’t show that when I salute General Zia and start walking towards Pak One, my smile vanishes. I know I am saluting a dead man but that doesn’t change anything. If you are in uniform you salute; that is all there is to it.
THIRTY-FIVE
The telephone logs kept at Langley’s Ops Room would later reveal that the early shift on the South Asia Desk logged one hundred and twelve calls in an attempt to locate the US Ambassador to Pakistan, Arnold Raphel. The search for Arnold Raphel was triggered by a tip-off that the local CIA chief received from a major in the Pakistan Army; there are too many mangoes on Pak One and the air conditioning might not work. Chuck Coogan did not have the patience or the time to work with culture-specific codes. He informed Langley and when the duty analyst told him that they had intercepted a message from a Pakistani general about Pak One and mangoes, Chuck got worried. “Let’s keep the ambassador off that plane.” Chuck Coogan made a mental note to include a paragraph about the breakdown of the chain of command in the Pakistan Army in his monthly debrief and started working the phone.