Part 20 (2/2)

”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 gla.s.ses. General Zia rubs his left eye and says, ”Something has got into my eye. Can I borrow your sungla.s.ses?” General Zia has his eyes fixed on General Beg's face, waiting for the sungla.s.ses 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 sungla.s.ses.

Both of General Beg's hands move in unison. His left hand removes the sungla.s.ses and offers them to General Zia, while his right hand goes into his s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+gri 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 c.o.c.ked 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 sungla.s.ses 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, ”b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 sungla.s.ses, 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 s.h.i.+gri'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 s.h.i.+ft on the South Asia Desk logged one hundred and twelve calls in an attempt to locate the US Amba.s.sador 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 a.n.a.lyst told him that they had intercepted a message from a Pakistani general about Pak One and mangoes, Chuck got worried. ”Let's keep the amba.s.sador 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.

The calls were routed through the SouthEast Asia Bureau in Hong Kong, through the Islamabad Emba.s.sy and finally through the liaison office in Peshawar. In a last desperate attempt, a communication satellite was ordered to change its...o...b..t to get a bearing on his satellite phone receiver. The logbook wouldn't mention the reason for this urgency. The logbook wouldn't say that Arnold Raphel had decided to visit an orphanage a.s.sociated with a local church in an attempt to not get stuck with General Zia, to avoid the embarra.s.sing post-mortem on the Mi Abram's performance.

The satellite receiver, a clunky silver contraption cased in a hard plastic box, is switched off and stashed under the back seat of the amba.s.sador's black Mercedes. The Mercedes is parked in the brick-lined courtyard of a Catholic church under construction. The scaffolding has been covered with white plastic sheets for the amba.s.sador's visit, the emblem of the Carmelite sisters, with its three stars and a silver cross, hangs limp from the mast on the roof of the church. Behind the Mercedes, the commandos from the Pakistan Army are stretching their limbs in the open-topped jeeps, cooling down under the scarce shade of date trees and listening to the strains of music coming through the church door.

Arnold Raphel is inside the low-ceilinged hall, sitting on the front bench surrounded by barefoot nuns, listening to the strangest choir of his life. There is a man on the harmonium and a twelve-year-old boy sits besides him playing the tabla. ”In the school of the crucified one, in the school of the crucified one,” sings the man playing the harmonium, and a choir of well-scrubbed children wearing khaki shorts and white half-sleeved s.h.i.+rts stretch their arms out and tilt their heads towards the right to mime the crucified one. The ceiling fan, the iced c.o.ke, the sound of proper American English in this remote desert village, lulls Arnold Raphel, a strange calm descends on him and for a few moments he forgets about the awful tank trial and about his impending return journey with General Zia. This is not the kind of church he occasionally visited in a Was.h.i.+ngton DC suburb. There is incense on the altar, and the nuns smile at him extravagantly. A plump Jesus painted on a backdrop in various shades of gold and pink, with a marigold garland around his neck, looks down on the congregation with his kohl-lined eyes. ”You don't pay any fees, you don't pay any fees” Arnold Raphel bends forward to hear the nun's whisper who is translating the hymn for him. ”You don't pay any fees, in the school of the crucified one.” His eyes are transfixed by the nun's bare feet. There are rows and rows of delicate crosses on both her feet, tattooed with henna. A smile plays on Arnold Raphel's face and he decides to stay on till the end of the service. General Zia can have his own G.o.ddam mango party on Pak One, he thinks, I should go back on my own Cessna. ”You have to pay with your head, you have to pay with your head, on the chopping board.” The orphans cut their throats with imaginary swords and the chorus sings on. ”In the school of the crucified one. In the school of the crucified one.”

The chief communication officer in Langley throws his hands up in the air and reports that the amba.s.sador is probably having a very long siesta. ”Pak One has got clearance to taxi. It is taking off within minutes,” reports the communication satellite picking up the air traffic control's calls from the garrison. The duty a.n.a.lyst at the South Asia Desk looks at all the calls logged in his register, starting with the first call made by a general with the unlikely name of Beg who had pleaded that the US Amba.s.sador shouldn't join the mango part on Pak One and decides that there is no need to pursue the matter any further.

Trust these Pakistani generals to get excited about a G.o.ddam smelly fruit, he tells his colleagues, clocking off his s.h.i.+ft.

THIRTY-SIX.

Major Kiyani looks down at his slippers and for a moment forgets why he isn't wearing his military boors. His head feels dizzy as if he has just come off a roller coaster. He sucks in air with the l.u.s.t of a dying fish. Throughout the entire five-hundred-and-thirty-mile drive he has rehea.r.s.ed one sentence: ”It's a matter of life and death, sir, it's a matter of life and death, sir.” He looks around. Arnold Raphel is nowhere in sight. There is not a single American on the tarmac. General Akhtar looks at him with pleading eyes, imploring him to say G.o.d knows what. Major Kiyani suddenly feels that he should salute, walk back to his car, drive back to his office, at a reasonable speed this time, and resume his duties. But he can feel the snipers' guns pointed at the back of his head and two pairs of very curious eyes inspecting his face, waiting for an explanation. A matter of life and death, sir, he says quietly once again to himself, but then between gulping a few more cubic feet of oxygen blurts: ”It's a matter of national security, sir.”

A dark shadow falls across General Akhtar's tense, yellow face. He wants to shoot Major Kiyani in the head, board his Cessna and fly back to Islamabad. He expects his men to take decisive action, to cover his flanks in battle, to provide him an exit when he needs one, not behave like pansies discussing national security.

He sucks in his thin lips and holds on to his baton tightly. Suddenly Major Kiyani seems to him not the rescuer on horseback waving the irrefutable proof of his innocence, but the Angel of Death himself.

General Zia's eyes light up, he punches the air with his clinched fist and shouts: ”By jingo, let's suck the national security. We've got twenty crates. General Akhtar, here my brother, my comrade, we are going to have a feast on the plane.” He puts one arm around General Akhtar's waist, the other around Major Kiyani's and starts walking towards Pak One.

General Zia is feeling safe surrounded by these two professionals but his mind is racing ahead. A jumble of images and words and forgotten tastes are coming back to him. He wishes he could speak as fast as his mind is working but he can't arrange his words properly. By jingo, he thinks, we will get rid of that b.a.s.t.a.r.d with sungla.s.ses; we'll hang him by the barrel of Abram One and fire the gun. We'll see how Abram One misses that one. He laughs out loud at that thought. ”We'll buy those tanks. We need those tanks,” he says to Arnold Raphel and then realises that the amba.s.sador isn't at his side.

”Where is Brother Raphel?” he shouts. General Akhtar sees his opportunity and squirms in General Zia's grip. ”I'll go and look for him.” General Zia tightens his arm around General Akhtar's waist, looks into his eyes and says in a spurned lover's voice. ”You don't want to suck national security with me? You can slice it with a knife and eat it like those city begums. You can have it anyway you want, brother. We have got twenty crates of the finest national security gifted by our own people.”

General Zia approaches the red carpet and a dozen generals line up to salute him. As their hands reach their eyebrows, General Zia winces and instead of returning their salute inspects their faces. General Zia wonders what they are thinking. He wants to ask them about their wives and children, to start a conversation to get an insight into his commanders' thinking but he ends up issuing an invitation that sounds like an order. ”The party is on the plane.” He points his finger at Pak One. ”All aboard, gentlemen. All aboard. By jingo, let's get this party started.”

It is at this point, taking his first step on the red carpet and chaperoning a dozen confused generals towards Pak One that General Zia feels the first pang of an intense, dry pain in his lower abdomen.

The army of tapeworms, sensing a sudden surge in his blood circulation, begins to wake from their slumber. The tapeworms feel ravenous. A tapeworm's average age is seven years and it spends its entire life searching for and consuming food. The life cycle of this generation begins on a very lucky note. Climbing up from his r.e.c.t.u.m, they attack the liver first. They find it healthy and clean, the liver of a man who has not touched a drop of alcohol in twenty years and has quit smoking nine years earlier.

His innards taste like the innards of a man who has had food tasters taste every morsel that he ate for an entire decade. Having worked through his liver, the army starts to make a tunnel in his oesophagus and keeps moving up and up.

Their seven-year life cycle would be cut down to twenty minutes, but while they were alive, they would eat well.

THIRTY-SEVEN.

Pak One is a palace compared to the C130 that flew us here. It's got air conditioning. The floor smells of lemony disinfectants. We are sitting behind the VIP pod, in proper seats with armrests. There is even a waiter in a white turban offering us iced Coca-Cola in plastic gla.s.ses. This is the good life, I tell myself. I am poking Obaid in his ribs with my elbow, trying to point towards the cargo lift that's depositing a stack of crates through the plane's ramp. Obaid has got his nose buried in the book. He doesn't even glance towards me. Warrant Officer Fayyaz's bald head appears from behind the stack of wooden crates. Elaborate messages have been stencilled in blue ink on the crates. ”The mangoes that we present you are not just seasonal fruits, they are tokens of our love, a sign of our devotion.” All Pakistan Mango Farmers Cooperative is stencilled in bold letters on all the crates. Secretary General's fellow travellers are still playing their double game. Warrant Officer Fayyaz secures the crates to the floor of the plane with a plastic belt and gives the belt a forceful shake to see if it is secure. It is.

As the ramp door on the aircraft comes up and creaks shut, the cabin is suddenly full of the overwhelming smell of mangoes. One mango's smell is nice, the smell of a tonne of them can induce nausea. Fayyaz looks through me as if he had never tried to molest me. Major Kiyani is standing with his back reclined against the VIP pod as if he expects to be invited in at any time. He seems strait jacketed in a uniform a size too small. I give Obaid another nudge in the ribs. ”Look at his feet.” Obaid glances at him impatiently. ”He is wearing slippers. So? At least he has started wearing a uniform. One thing at a time.” He buries his nose in his book again. Major Kiyani comes towards me and stares at my face as if he has suddenly remembered that he has seen me somewhere but doesn't quite know what to say to me. I vacate my seat. ”Sir, why don't you sit here?” He almost falls into the seat as if his knees have refused to carry his weight. Warrant Officer Fayyaz shouts from behind the mango crates. ”I'll have to offload you, Under Officer. We are not allowed to carry standing pa.s.sengers on Pak One.” I have half a mind to squash his head with a mango crate, but two bearded commandos manning the C13O door are already looking at me suspiciously. ”Let's go, Obaid,” I say, moving towards the door without looking at him, feeling as if I have been ejected from my ringside seat at General Zia's deathbed. From the door I look back and Obaid waves his book towards me and at the same time mouths what to me sounds like: ”I am about to finish.”

I give him a scornful look, nod towards Major Kiyani who has slumped in his chair with his eyes closed, tip my peaked cap to the commandos on the door and shout, ”Enjoy your VVIP flight.”

”Brother Raphel, you have not had lunch with us,” General Zia says in a complaining voice and takes Arnold Raphel's hand in both his hands and starts walking towards Pak One. ”I know you were taking a siesta with Jesus and Mary.” General Zia puts an arm around his waist and lowers his voice to a whisper. ”Now we must put our heads together and suck national security.” Arnold Raphel, still reeling from his spiritual encounter with the Carmelite sisters and their singing orphans, thinks General Zia is cracking a joke.

<script>