Read THE HUNT FOR KOHINOOR BOOK 2 OF THE THRILLER SERIES FEATURING MEHRUNISA Online
Authors: Manreet Sodhi Someshwar
Bhakra Dam, India
Wednesday 3 p.m.
It was a lovely winter afternoon: crisp air, blue sky,
mild sun. Nature clearly had no inkling of the upcoming attack.
Jag Mishra, with R.P. Singh and Raghav – who insisted on accompanying them, his left arm and elbow in a shoulder brace – had laid siege to Bhakra Dam.
Visitors were discouraged with the abrupt announcement that ‘routine inspection at the dam necessitated the temporary suspension of tourist facilities’. Irate tour groups with advance booking were being refunded. As a result, the Gobind Sagar Lake lay quiet. Instead several police boats patrolled on quiet guard. Divers pressed into service in the past few hours had located no submarine, no torpedoes, no missiles. The lake was 90 kilometres long and spread over an area of 168 sq km – an army of divers wouldn’t be able to explore it in a month…
It was peak tourist season, a time when the dam buzzed as a tourist destination, and the water level of the reservoir was high. Jag Mishra had tussled with the question: should he announce publicly that an attack was expected? That would keep the public away for sure, but would it save lives? Cruel calculation: if the attack occurred as anticipated, nobody and nothing would be safe. On the other hand, announcing the attack would alert Mehrunisa’s abductor and the mastermind of the Kohinoor might take her out… And move the attack forward. He had too much riding on Kohinoor to call off the attack. The rebel American-Afghan was a desperate man, otherwise he would not have taken out the Pakistani President. Babur the Butcher was counting on this attack to further the wedge between India and Pakistan, take the world’s eye off Afghanistan where, with the drawdown of NATO and American troops, the land was ready for his leadership.
The men knew what they had to do, having discussed their roles in Srinagar earlier. Jag Mishra proceeded to set up his control room from where he could oversee the operation and coordinate with the multiple state police heads, CISF and his own men. Raghav and R.P. Singh staked out their territory and set off to scour the grounds with a team each of security men. The three had agreed: no intel was to be shared with any of the search teams unless absolutely essential. The nation’s security was at stake, Harry was in the field, Mehrunisa’s life hung in the balance – one leak and it could all go kaput.
Kohinoor had thrown up one mole already – digging could throw up more. And locating the ghar ka bhedhi was critical.
AfPak Border
Wednesday 4:34 p.m.
Once again Mehrunisa found herself swimming
up
through fog. Since it was a repeat she found it less disorienting. When her eyes and her mind had awoken fully she registered the darkness around her. And the stillness. The cave must be deep inside some mountain in an isolated terrain, which would explain the lack of sounds. Propping herself up, she blinked her eyes at a battery-powered lamp beside the bed – she hadn’t noticed it before. She extended her right arm to locate the switch and flicked it on. In the dim lamplight she read the time. Next to the lamp was a blue glass vase that hadn’t been there earlier. A rolled sheet lay within. She plucked it out, registering the pain in her shoulder as she extended her arm.
Sitting up she stretched out the roll and gasped. A pencil sketch of a woman with straight hair, broad forehead, slim nose – she was looking at herself. It was an uncannily realistic representation.
‘Do you like it?’
The soft voice made her jump. It had come from the other end of the room, a cot where Babur Khan reclined, his eyes on her.
How long had he watched her as she slept? She shuddered, feeling his eyes on her… This was no ordinary man she was dealing with, she knew – he was Babur Khan. Mehrunisa felt ice grow inside her chest – this man was obsessive and meticulous and driven. She had called him a ‘failed artist’ and he had responded with a pencil sketch that would have taken admirable workmanship and time – he had produced it instead in a few hours
inside an ill-lit cave.
What was he driven by? A desire to impress her or to prove her wrong? Mehrunisa took a deep breath, trying to fill her lungs with air even as icy fingers encircled her ribs. She felt afraid, very afraid.
‘It’s very good,’ she assented. ‘Clearly, you have a gift.’
‘So you like my offering?’
She studied the sketch in her lap, avoiding his eyes, thinking.
He swung his legs off the cot and faced her. ‘I want you by my side Mehrunisa. We have a long struggle ahead and a man gets lonely. You and I have so much in common, you would be perfect for me.’
Babur the Butcher, her mind screamed through the fog.
Unthinking, Mehrunisa shook her head and made to speak. But he quieted her with a wave of his hand and in one lithe move was kneeling by her side, his hazel eyes looking up into her face. ‘No, don’t say anything. You don’t realize it now, but you will. You will comprehend how alike we are. You and I.’
As his hand moved up to caress her face Mehrunisa twisted away. Babur Khan’s face hardened as he shot forward and gripped her arms. Mehrunisa struggled to free herself, writhing in the fierce grasp. With both her hands she attempted to push him back and the next instant found her wrists cuffed in his powerful grip. The look in Babur Khan’s eyes had changed again – there was mischief in the deep-set eyes that crinkled at the corner with humour. A part of her brain registered the handsome visage, the craggy face with a fine beard that gave him a rakish look and, as he moved closer, the light brown eyes lit up with desire – it terrified her. She twisted her trapped hands, shoving him. The next instant Babur Khan let go and jerked back.
Astonished, Mehrunisa inspected her immediate surround. But Babur Khan’s eyes were fixed in horrified wonder on her neck. Her hand moved up to where his gaze lay and found the turbah. Something about it had unnerved him. Mehrunisa now clung to it for life, her breath coming in rapid, shallow drafts.
‘Take it OFF!’
The turbah was made of clay from the soil of Karbala, the holiest shrine for Shias – her mother, never overtly religious, had practised her faith nevertheless. Babur Khan, the Sunni Pathan, seemed unnerved by it – did it evoke for him the land that marked the division of Islam? Land that was synonymous with martyrdom, where Shah Imam had given up his life for a cause he believed in? A cause that had survived his killing and beheading? Had the turbah smacked him with the gulf between a Shiite Mehrunisa and his Sunni self?
‘You’ll have to take it off Mehrunisa,’ he said, his voice steady now. As he had demonstrated earlier, he was quick to regain his composure.
‘No. It belongs to my mother.’
His jaw muscles clenched such that his cheeks hollowed out. Babur Khan raised his arm in fury and smote. The vase of blue glass beside the lamp crashed to the rock floor and shattered, its clatter shrill in the quiet air. Next he was striding out of the cave.
The raised arm, the sudden crash – they had unnerved her. She had to steady herself and think quickly. The conversation was surreal. Babur Khan’s proposition was something out of a Grimm Brothers tale, the invitation to spend her days in a subterranean cave like Thumbelina married to the mole. She glanced around her – the rock walls were crowding upon her. No, no – the cave bearing down on her right now was very real. The idea was fantastic but her captor had meant it. He was unhinged, no doubt. She couldn’t live here but she didn’t want to die either! As a mixture of fear and loathing gripped her, she started to shiver. She gagged, doubled over and sputtered air.
She hadn’t eaten in ages, which was making her weak and hallucinatory. Think Mehrunisa! she urged herself. Shards of blue glass lay on the floor. The vase had come from Herat in all likelihood, the city known for its handmade blue glass. Why blue? Did the influence come from adjoining Iran where blue-domed mosques were common, a legacy of the Safavids? Mehrunisa reached for a largish chunk and gripped it. Her ears pricked.
Hurried footsteps were approaching. Rough, chunky, the shard was shaped like a thin triangle with a long jagged edge. A shadow was looming at the entrance. She ran a finger along the edge, and sprouted a drop of blood. A form filled the doorway. Stashing the shard beneath her quilt she sucked on the cut finger. A boy bounded in, eyes lowered, shoulders hunched, a plate of food in his hands. Mehrunisa’s hand clasped the turbah.
Depositing the plate on the far edge of her cot, the boy hunkered down and began to gather the glass shards in his outstretched kameez. When he was done he hurried out the same way he had arrived. A guttural voice, then a tall form blocked the doorway with its bulk. The man had his back to her but the gun slung on one shoulder was visible. As was a belt of bullets he had hung which formed a menacing garland at entry.
Mehrunisa clutched her kara – fear was okay, she’d never seen a weapon this big this close. Yet, her mind sized that silhouetted gun against the shard of blue glass beside her, plunging her heart into a free fall. Once again Mehrunisa was that young girl who had pleaded for her father’s return, first thought in the morning, last prayer at night, with ceaseless beseeching through the day…
Please Papa, come back!
Adezai, Pakistan
Wednesday 4:56 p.m.
Harry focused his mind on the detailed map of the
terrain that he’d carried with him, consulting Malik as he pored over what the US had described as the most dangerous place on earth.
By topography alone it was one of the most rugged fighting spots for regular warfare. Direct fighting was compounded by a ferocious enemy who was able to ambush and then disappear down goat paths or melt away into warrens of mud-hut villages. The region’s desolate plateaus, caves and roadless basins provided an ideal battlefield for guerrilla fighters like the Taliban.
It was late in the afternoon and still no sign of a response. Harry had sipped some tea in the room where Malik had set him up. Then he forced himself to get some rest. Even if no information was forthcoming he would have to set out after midnight to attempt the impossible.
Behind his shuttered eyes Harry saw Mehr, the young girl who had grown up while his mind deceived him. She had travelled with him to Kashmir, Maadar preferring to visit her family in Isfahan. They had skied in Gulmarg. Mehr, of course, was a great skier, having taken her first ski lesson on the Italian Alps when she was five. She had a natural facility for the sport. Did she ski still? He tried to imagine her on a ski slope. With a start Harry realized that he could not really see Mehrunisa. Instead he saw his wife.
He opened his eyes wide and lay staring at the pista green ceiling. He had seen his grown-up daughter after a hiatus of seventeen years, for barely ten minutes, and all he remembered was the realization that she looked like a younger version of her mother. Harry tried to remember Mehrunisa as he had seen her that afternoon, adding the details he recalled to aid his reconstruction: the turquoise pashmina wrapped around her, the quiver in her voice as she remarked on his Astaire, the grey-green eyes, remote yet troubled–
A knock at the door and Malik stepped inside. ‘We might have something.’
Bhakra Dam, India
Wednesday 6:02 p.m.
As he prowled the perimeter of the dam, R.P. Singh
had the same conversation with himself over and over: if you were a Maoist how would you hide from the police? How did a Naxal stay within the perimeter of police scan yet not announce his presence? How did Naxals simultaneously terrify the tribals and not acquire a bad name?
Because Naxals wore police uniforms.
Singh’s eyes casually roamed over the security personnel stretched in all directions. If you were a jihadi looking to mount the greatest terror attack, what better place to hide than in full view? One or more had to have embedded themselves in the dam’s security detail, but there was no time to go over the specifics of each policeman deployed at the dam.
Which was why Singh had chosen to patrol this area – he had a hawk eye for spotting quarry, and equally fluid moves. What he needed though was ten more of himself at duty with him right now!
Adezai, Pakistan
Wednesday 5:36 p.m.
In Abdus Malik’s living room, a young man stood
awkwardly in the centre. Malik’s thickset commander prompted him to repeat what he had divulged earlier. The young man belonged to a village in the neighbouring Orakzai Agency and was clearly out of his depth in the mayor’s home.
Harry addressed him in Pashto, enquiring his name.
Aarif was a boy really, thirteen or fourteen years of age. He was blessed with the height of a giraffe which gave him the look of a gangly young man. Harry persisted in conversing with him in Pashto, trying to ease the boy who held some vital clue to Mehr’s whereabouts.
Hesitantly, Aarif started to talk. He had a colt’s manner of not making eye contact as he spoke. Concentrating on the feet of the men who encircled him, he explained how he was playing in a hilly ravine on the edge of Adezai the day before. Apparently, it was a regular spot for the group of ragamuffin boys: sufficiently removed from their village yet accessible. It was a game of soccer. When the ball was kicked high, it escaped the ravine and rolled off. The boy went in search of it despite heading into what was forbidden land. The territory had of late seen some incursions by the Taliban. In fact, one of the boys had narrated seeing a couple of Talib snoring in one of the caves, cradling their weapons, when he had gone in search of a goat once. They’d sent him away but kept the goat.
Anyway, Aarif wasn’t supposed to be playing soccer at that time. He was herding the family goats when he got tempted. A short game of soccer later he rounded up the goats and headed home. However, his father thrashed him soundly because a couple of goats were missing. When Aarif confessed that he was playing on the job he was commanded to bring the goats back. The only problem: it was midnight and a light snow was falling. His mother pleaded but his father held firm and sent him packing with a Pashto proverb: If retching is your destiny, grit your teeth!
With his heart thudding loud enough for the Taliban to hear, Aarif was scrambling among the scraggy bushes, his eyes alert. He had made it to the bottom of the ravine when he heard the roar of a jeep. Quickly he hid behind a boulder, not daring to breathe. A jeep pulled up, raising a cloud of ice and snow. Despite himself, he peeped. Through the flurry he saw a woman being bundled out of the jeep. She was made to climb up the hills and disappeared around a bend. Aarif surmised the woman was not from the area. She wore no burqa.
‘What was she dressed in?’ Harry barked.
‘Jeans,’ the boy answered. ‘And she had wrapped herself in a shawl.’
‘Colour of the shawl?’
‘Fayroz.’
Fayroz
. Turquoise. Harry shut his eyes. The shawl that Mehrunisa was wearing belonged to her mother, his wife.