The Acquaintance Read online

  The traffic report gave way to the report of an accident at Kamathipura. RJ Maven was very vague with his reporting, which was a good thing, details were still being kept under wraps. But Nargis knew it was only a matter of time before speculation and conjecture dominated the airwaves spreading panic among the masses. And then before you know it, expert panels would be convened on primetime television to speculate on which religious group was responsible for spreading fear and terror in the country. The nation will apparently demand to know. Nargis was lost in thought when her phone chimed with an incoming message. She looked at her phone perched in its holder on the windshield. As her eyes roved over the message, she felt her heart rate rise and adrenaline pulse through her veins. When it rained, it poured.

  She didn’t realise that her foot was pressing down on the accelerator, the needle on the speedometer was inching dangerously close to triple digits. Nargis was not paying attention to the road, her eyes were glued to the words on the phone. This could not be happening. An inhumanly loud blaring horn cut through her hazy mind and Nargis looked up just in time to see a Mercedes heading straight for her. She swerved her ancient Hyundai Verna to avoid a head-on collision. She felt the tyres squeal in protest and saw the driver in the Mercedes gesture rudely at her before she came to a stop on the sidewalk.

  Nargis inhaled and exhaled deeply till she gained some semblance of control over her breathing. She pulled down the sun visor and checked herself in the mirror, her nose was bleeding and she looked pale and flushed. Suddenly an overwhelming exhaustion seemed to take over her body. She took one last look at the phone before switching it off. She couldn’t worry about anything else now. She had a job to do.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) Wing in Mumbai was an unassuming building in Mahalakshmi. Six stories of glass and concrete with a singular spine and two wings spread out on either side like a daunting moth. Nargis punched in her code at the entrance and dropped all her electronics and belongings into a plastic tray. Electronics weren’t allowed inside the building. It was standard procedure.

  Since Nargis was the head of the DIA’s storied Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), she was one of the few people who were allowed to carry their phones inside. Her’s was a custom made android phone with an AES-512 bit encryption. The highest level of the Advanced Encryption Standard invented. Her phone was her master key.

  She was patted down and wanded with the metal detector before she was let in. It was 6:35 a.m. on Maundy Thursday. She headed straight for John’s corner office, facing the beach. Being Deputy Director of Operations sure had its perks. After ten years at DIA, she had been in line for that position until Colonel John Verghese from Army Intelligence had swooped in from nowhere and pulled the rug underneath her. Nargis knew exactly why she had been overlooked. It was because she was a woman. John had explicitly told her so. “A woman cannot think like a soldier or a spy. It’s a man’s game.”

  His words verbatim. The higher-ups had bulldozed her because she wasn’t a team player. Retribution because she had told the truth about “Operation Typhoon”, a botched reconnaissance mission along the LOC, she had been the analyst on sight and she had seen something she shouldn’t have.

  “You are not a single entity in this organisation Ms. Hussein. If your team can’t trust you, how will you accomplish anything. You are supposed to have their backs. You are supposed to be a team player. The army is our ally and after what you have pulled, we need to offer them an olive branch.”

  An excerpt from the hour long sermon she had received from the Director of the DIA on why John Verghese was being brought in as Sectional Chief and why she wasn’t getting the promotion. Nargis had learned a valuable lesson that day, in order to do her job, she would have to play dirty.

  John’s office was a glass cube. Some kind of symbol for transparency. What a joke. John was on the phone when Nargis knocked on his door. He waved her in. Nargis waited while he finished his call. She looked in his opulent office. A giant bank of LED TVs dominated the wall behind his desk. He placed the phone down and looked at her, she couldn’t read the cruel calculations behind those eyes.

  “The National Security Advisor and the Director are surprised that such an attack occurred without the head of the CTU even getting a whiff of it. Don’t you find that weird?”

  Nargis clenched her fists, John was clearly enjoying himself. Two people were dead and he was taking a perverse pleasure in throwing her under the bus. “Well do you have anything to say in defence of yourself, we have literally been caught with our pants down, not that you seem to care”, he smirked. He actually smirked at her. Nargis calmed herself, her nails digging into her palms.

  “With all due respect Colonel, I’ve just arrived from the scene and from a preliminary investigation. I believe it is too early to call it a terrorist attack”. John leaned over the desk, his eyes widening like dinner plates. He picked up a remote and flipped on the wall of TVs. In an instant the wall was filled with the words “Death To Infidels, Glory To Jihad” superimposed on a red flag and a crescent moon. A heavily modulated voice spoke over the image, The bombing at Chor Bazaar was an action against the infidels and the unjust on behalf of the Mahdi.

  Nargis drew in a sharp breath, the Mahdi, Mohammad Shahzad, the leader of ICARUS was taking credit for the attack.

  CHAPTER 4

  The boy hid behind the crates. He watched from afar as the man stood on the pulpit addressing the men and women gathered there. They stood like regal warriors listening to their patron saint. The boy stood mesmerised. Entranced by the man’s eloquence. He cast his eyes to the leader as euphoric chants of “Allahu Akbar” filled the air. The warriors before him fired their weapons into the air in triumphant celebration. What the celebration was for, the boy did not know, but he knew that one day he would lead those warriors just like the man on the pulpit. The boy felt a presence behind him but before he could react, he was caught by the scruff of the neck and pushed hard against the wooden crate. “What are you doing?”, rasped the voice behind him, the boy could feel his assailant’s warm breath on his neck. He felt the hairs on his nape stand up. “I was merely listening to the words of the Mahdi”, said the boy. “I meant no disrespect”, the boy felt fingers grope his torso and move down in person. The fingers roamed close to his nethers and the boy felt his face grow out with shame. He felt tears fill his eyes as he pleaded. “You intrude upon the sanctity of the Mahdi’s sermon”, said his assailant, his hands groping and cupping every bump and orifice on the boy’s body. “I am a believer, I meant no disrespect. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to intrude.” The assailant’s hands stopped between his buttocks. “Turn around”, he said, his voice barely above a whisper. The boy felt the weight of the words carried on his breath. Tears rolled down his cheeks streaking them with dirt.

  He did not turn. His assailant grabbed him roughly by the shoulders and hair and turned him around. His body pirouetted like a rag doll and he cried out in pain. He could see that his assailant was an old man, with rivers of grey cutting through the black of his beard. He pressed the boy’s neck with his right hand. The boy gasped for breath but could not find his voice. The man brought two fingers to his lips and began tapping them furiously, his eyes wide and manic. The gesture was simple enough to understand. Keep quiet or die. The man used his free hand to untether the knot on the boy’s pajama. The boy struggled against the man’s grip. He had moved his hand from his throat to the boy’s mouth. The boy tried to call out, his screams bouncing off sweaty palms as the man’s free hand pulled down his trousers. The boy saw the old man’s eyes light up. The man pinched the skin on his nethers and the boy screamed. The sound that escaped was a wet gag lost in the night. The boy closed his eyes tight. He could see bright worms in the darkness of his eyelids. They would keep him company till it was over. He felt wood on his face again. He had been turned around, he felt fingers ghost over his buttocks. He felt a kick to his ankle. The boy tumbled but was steadied by
his assailant. “Spread your legs”, the man spat into his ear. The boy obliged silently. He knew he was alone. He was an orphan. No one was coming to help him. He prayed to Allah to save him. The boy heard a scream, but it wasn’t his own. His eyes snapped open as he heard a voice speak to him. A beautiful voice he had heard only moments before, a voice he was being punished for spying on. “Are you alright my child?” The boy felt his trousers being fastened across his waist. He felt the knot tighten. He looked up at the man who was dressing him. An angel with the aqueous eyes of holy water. The Mahdi held out his hand and the boy took it. As he followed the angel into the palace of god, he turned around to look at the man who had assaulted him. He was being dragged by the warriors to the pulpit. The Mahdi stopped, his eyes followed the boys’. “Would you like to watch divine justice?”, said the saint. The boy nodded wordlessly. The warriors had stopped. The man was cowering at their feet. He was weeping, just like the boy had been. In that moment, the boy knew what he would do for the rest of his life. He would be a warrior for god, without mercy. He looked at the Mahdi and nodded. The saint smiled at him.

  He turned to the crowd of warriors and gave a nod. The screams that followed would never leave the boy. To him they would always be the clarion call of war.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Mahdi was supposed to be dead or that was what the intelligence community had been led to believe. He had supposedly been killed in a joint covert operation between the DIA and MI6. Nobody had been disclosed and the assassination had been kept under the wraps. The President of the United States had not announced the Mahdi’s assassination on Live TV either. Maybe this is why? They had not succeeded in killing him. And here he was again. Mahmoud Shahzad, the Mahdi.

  Nargis was still staring at the screen, dumbfounded. The anchor, an obnoxious and unreasonably loud man with sagging jowls and a pencil thin French beard was describing the attack. But Nargis only had eyes for the propaganda video that was playing in a small window behind the anchor. It showed a man in his early to mid seventies, with a flowing white beard, on his knees on a prayer mat. He had deep sunken eyes and the tell-tale black bruise on his forehead. The bruise on the forehead was usually a result of prostrating yourself during namaz five times a day. Six decades of piety would result in a bruised discolouration on the forehead. Quite common to a lot of devoted Muslim elders. But when it came to the man on the screen, Nargis knew for a fact that the bruise on his forehead was make-up, smudged kajal to be exact. An act to seem more devout than he really was. She leaned in closer to get a better look at the man. For all his wrinkles and scrapes of age, the man looked remarkably young. In fact he looked a decade younger than he should be. His words were the same, a call to action against infidels. A call to his brethren and other noble warriors to join the cause for the kingdom of heaven. There was no way to carbon date the video. The quality of the video was extremely bad like it was shot in the eighties but the man who was speaking seemed up to date. Name dropping leaders of industry, scientists and current heads of state that he would sacrifice to the Glory of the Prophet, if his needs are not met. But what Nargis found most alarming about the video were the words superimposed on the entire frame like a watermark:

  حَدَّثَنَا مُوسَى بْنُ إِسْمَاعِيلَ، حَدَّثَنَا حَمَّادٌ، عَنْ قَتَادَةَ، عَنْ مُطَرِّفٍ، عَنْ عِمْرَانَ بْنِ حُصَيْنٍ، قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم ‏ “‏ لاَ تَزَالُ طَائِفَةٌ مِنْ أُمَّتِي يُقَاتِلُونَ عَلَى الْحَقِّ ظَاهِرِينَ عَلَى مَنْ نَاوَأَهُمْ حَتَّى يُقَاتِلَ آخِرُهُمُ الْمَسِيحَ الدَّجَّالَ ‏”‏

  صحيح (الألباني) حكم :

  The Prophet said: A section of my community will continue to fight for the right and overcome their opponents till the last of them fights with the Antichrist.”

  An excerpt from the world famous book by al-Sulami, a preacher in the Umayyad mosque in Damascus in about 1105, warning presciently of the dangers of neglecting the Crusader threat, and urging the faithful to unite under the banner of jihad. The book was simply called Kitab-al-Jihad. The Book of Jihad.

  Mahmoud Shahzad was targeting the crusaders or in other words Christians.

  “The blood of the Caliphate will burn in glory before the resurrection” were the final words of the video. He was going to attack the city on Easter, which gave her a window of about eighty hours to track down a bomb and stop a maniacal terrorist. Shit.

  The speaker on the desk crackled with a familiar voice, which drew Nargis’ attention to it. “Ms. Hussein, these recent events have bordered on gross incompetence on your part”. Nargis tensed, she recognised the voice. It belonged to the National Security Advisor. She looked up at John, who was sneering. That bastard. “Sir, if you would let me explain...”, she began but was cut off. “I’ve heard all that I need to hear Ms. Hussein, our top priority, Mohammad Shahzad has just breached our shores and struck at the heart of our country, and we were caught unaware. The reason I gave you CTU Ms. Hussein was because you showed potential and promise. Now, as you can see, every news outlet...he paused, every civilian news outlet out there seems to have more intelligence than the top brass of Indian Intelligence. I will not stand for it. As you may have surmised from his rhetoric, he is planning something big for the culmination of the Holy Week, whatever it is, you need to find it before Easter. If you can’t get me Shahzad, I have better men ready to take your place”. Nargis knew she had been backed into a corner, regardless of the shocking broadcast, she knew in her gut that this was not a terror attack, but she would have to play her cards right. “I have a lead on Shahzad sir”, Nargis said confidently. John looked like he’d been slapped in the face. “How is that possible, I have no information on this”, John’s face had turned purple and he was blustering. Nargis revelled in his discomfort, but only for a moment. “Is this true Ms. Hussein?”

  “It’s from a confidential source, the lead just panned out this morning”. “Isn’t it a little co-incidental that Nargis just happened to receive a lead on Shahzad, the day of the attack”.

  Nargis had to salvage this situation. She had to get the vultures off her back. “She ignored John’s gaping gaze and plowed ahead. “Sir, if you would let me, I assure you I can get Shahzad.” There was silence on the other end. Nargis didn’t look up, but she could feel John’s gaze burn holes in her. This was a final hail mary, she was laying everything on the line here, her career and her life. After what felt like an eternity, the voice crackled on the other end, “Ms. Hussein, this is hardly the arena or the situation for you to earn your stripes, there are lives at stake.” Was he kidding? If there was anyone who knew the value of lives at stake, it was her. She unconsciously scratched the laser point mark on her chest. The focal point of her chemotherapy. No one could know about her cancer, especially not now. In any other situation, she would be anxious that the people around her already knew about her condition and were moving in for the kill, but she knew John Abraham was not smart enough to know anything till it smacked him right in the face. She took a deep breath and was ready to plead her case when John interrupted her. He leaned towards the phone. Nargis couldn’t imagine what he was planning on telling the director? He was going to burn her at the stake before she even got a chance to fix things. This was his moment to finally get rid of the thorn at his side.

  Nargis waited for the guillotine to drop. “Director, like it or not, Ms. Hussein is the Chief of CTU and as such has jurisdictional authority.” There was an audible scoff on the other end, “John are you shitting me right now?”, spat the director. The profanity shocked Nargis, ever since she had known the director, she had known him to be a dignified man, short-tempered, yes, but never uncouth. His complete lack of faith in her was beginning to piss her off, given her track record at the CTU, she shouldn’t even be having this conversation, s
he should be out looking for the maniacs who had levelled half of Chor bazaar. John was smiling, Nargis couldn’t figure out what his angle was? Why was he vouching for her? He couldn’t possibly want her to fail, not in this scenario when the entire city was being threatened? But she was wrong, that is exactly what he wanted. His next words confirmed it.

  “Director, with all due respect, with complete operational carte blanche and the right team even Ms. Hussein would find it hard to botch it up. Besides, I’m already coordinating a joint task force with our brother agencies to locate the perpetrators. If anything Ms. Hussein will be a plan B.” He looked at her and smiled, willing her to recognise that he had likened her to birth control.

  “Director, it’s all hands on deck for this, like John said, the agencies probably have the situation under control. If given a team I assure you that I can get to the bottom of whatever ICARUS is planning.” Nargis heard static on the other end, the man needed more convincing, she needed more skin in the game. “Sir, I know there are lives at stake and this is a big ask, but I assure you, if I can’t deliver within the stipulated time of 96 hours, I will resign my post at the CTU.”

  John stood up and took the director off speaker phone. “Wait outside.” He said picking up the receiver and putting it to his ear.

  Nargis stepped out of John’s office and placed a call to her secret contact, she had to put things into motion. She couldn’t let bureaucracy stall her. Her call lasted less than a minute, which confirmed the message she had received earlier, a singular name that had frozen her heart in place and turned her blood to ice. A name she had tried to forget for the past decade. She stood still and began reciting Bengali conjugations under her breath, she had begun listening to Bengali language tutorials on her phone during her long hour of chemo. After all, it was the fifth largest spoken language in the world. She had moved on to hyper conjugation and declension when the door to John’s office finally opened and he beckoned her in.