Let Bhutto Eat Grass 2 Read online

  LET BHUTTO

  EAT GRASS

  Part Two

  Shaunak Agarkhedkar

  This is a work of fiction. Except for public figures and organisations, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Motives ascribed to public figures and organisations in the interests of building a narrative are entirely the author’s creation

  Copyright © Shaunak Agarkhedkar, 2019

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Interior Design by Ekow Addai

  ISBN: 978-93-5351-257-6

  ALSO BY SHAUNAK AGARKHEDKAR

  Let Bhutto Eat Grass

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Shaunak Agarkhedkar was born in 1983 and attended the University of Pune and the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He is something of a fountain-pen fanatic, and delights in writing each novel by hand. He lives in Pune and consumes many litres of coffee every week.

  “But, Mousie, you are not alone,

  In proving foresight may be vain;

  The best-laid schemes of mice and men

  Go often astray,

  And leave us nothing but grief and pain,

  For promised joy!”

  —Robert Burns

  “To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough, November, 1785”

  Contents

  About The Author

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  SixteenAfterword

  ONE

  June 1976, Paris (France)

  The guest from l’Inde was halfway to the staircase when the front desk clerk caught up.

  The guest had been away all night and the clerk’s professional smile faltered when he noticed the muddy boots and caught a whiff of odour, but he caught himself immediately and restored the smile to full wattage. In a properly unctuous tone, he informed the guest about the maîtresse, but it was pretty obvious the man understood little French. The clerk tried again. He spoke a little slower this time, enunciating each word clearly with exaggerated lip movements as if he were speaking to a deaf person. When that didn’t work, the clerk shifted rather unhappily to faltering English. The results weren’t much better there either, and the guest waved him away impatiently and walked on to the stairs. The clerk looked after him in bewilderment. Between the smell of manual labour and the mud-streaked boots trampling over the recently cleaned carpet, he almost didn’t notice the deep red stain on the guest’s trousers below the left knee. Bewilderment soon gave way to annoyance at the footprints and what appeared to be fresh drops of blood marking the carpet. He wondered if he should refer the guest to a doctor but quickly dismissed the thought: the guest did not come across as someone who would rush to a doctor for minor injuries. The clerk waited till he had turned the corner and was out of sight, then shouted for the porter to clean up the mess. The thought of informing the police did not cross his mind; it wasn’t that sort of hotel.

  Sablok walked up the stairs, annoyed at the clerk. What had the man been going on about? Sablok had made it abundantly clear at the front desk the previous morning that he did not need anything, not even his room cleaned, much less the services of some lady of the night, as the man now seemed to be suggesting. There it was now, the “Ne pas deranger” sign he had left on his doorknob the previous morning, before he left to abduct Tahir Hussain alias Colonel Ejaz Khan—an officer with Pakistan’s intelligence agency posted to Paris under cover as a mid-level diplomat. He had also wedged a sliver of wood thinner than a toothpick between the door and the frame, taking care to make sure a tiny bit remained visible. One of his instructors at the Wing had called it “the wedge”.

  ‘When you return to your home or hotel room in hostile territory—say after servicing a dead letter box or meeting with an asset—what is the most valuable piece of information that you can hope for?’ the tubby fellow with the nom de guerre of “Kilo” had asked.

  There had been seven field agents in training that day and Kilo had received seven different answers, each of which he had heard with ill-concealed irritation.

  ‘Useless! Completely useless! Just like you behenchods!’ he had exclaimed in a chaste Hindi accent that put his origins considerably east of New Delhi. ‘The most important piece of information you can have before you enter your own house or hotel room is knowledge of whether or not anyone else entered it in your absence. They may have gone through your papers or your luggage. They may have poisoned your toothpaste. They may even be waiting for you inside, just behind the door in that dark room, piano wire drawn. The only thing in your favour, in that situation, is knowing that they may be in there. They won’t be expecting that. And the only thing that can give you that piece of information is the wedge. So worship it like you worship Hema Malini, you useless degenerates! If you place the wedge between the door and its frame—and provided you’ve done it with some degree of competence so that it isn’t obvious even to a blind man—when someone opens the door while you’re away, the wedge will fall to the ground. That way when you return, you’ll see that the wedge isn’t where you had left it. You can then decide if you truly want to go inside. It isn’t much by way of warning, but every little bit helps. Now, the wedge isn’t fool proof...’

  When Sablok reached for the doorknob, he should have looked for the sliver of wood eighteen inches below it and to its left. But the years spent sitting at a desk had taken their toll on his physical condition. He had blown past fatigue around dawn and by the time he reached Paris, his mind seemed to have lost its edge too. He entered his hotel room and bolted the door shut. Then, instead of checking the dark room, he dumped the small knapsack he was carrying and wearily reached for the bathroom doorknob to his right. Although the bathroom itself was as clean as he had left it the previous day, the stench of death—a mix of urine, shit, and something else that he couldn’t pinpoint—filled his nostrils as if Hussain’s rotting corpse had followed him all the way from Rambouillet to his hotel room.

  ‘Sort yourself out. It’s in your bloody head,’ he muttered to himself, irritated at what he perceived was a sign of weakness.

  He stepped into the bathroom and began running hot water into the bathtub. The water gurgled as it emerged from the ornate copper taps that had to be old enough to have lived through at least one if not both World Wars. The siren song of a long soak called out to his tired mind. He washed his hands at the basin while waiting for the tub to fill. Cold water and soap didn’t work very well. He washed them again, with hot water this time. The palms of his hands, now held together to form a bowl under the steaming jet, became a raging pink. He smiled as feeling returned to them in a thousand stinging needlepricks. He looked up. The mirror was beginning to fog from the steam. The person looking back at him seemed nearer fifty than thirty. Crow’s feet and dark circles framed the bloody rims of his eyes, wrinkles flanked the nose and mouth, and thick, grungy mud-streaked stubble covered hollow cheeks. He splashed water on his face, craving for the cool touch of a glass of whisky beaded with icy perspiration. The hotel room did not have a mini bar, but he remembered having taken four miniature bottles of whisky from the galley on th
e flight to London. He couldn’t remember the brand but at that point, with his mouth watering at the thought of liquid amber, it hardly mattered. There would be no ice, of course, but he was quite willing to sacrifice that creature comfort after spending two days, give or take a few hours, without so much as a sip. The headache rushing towards him took priority. The tub was half-full. He turned the copper tap shut, strangling the gurgling gush, and had just stepped outside the bathroom when a woman’s voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

  ‘Havildar Singh, the Chief sent me,’ she said.

  She was seated on a chair on the far side of the room, beyond the bed. In the light spilling into the room from the bathroom, he could see that she was dressed in a white sweater and dark grey trousers. He thought, rather absurdly, that she wouldn’t look out of place at one of the elegant cafés that dotted Parisian footpaths. Her pixie hair was auburn and her pronunciations distinctly English, almost like a BBC Radio broadcast. Her face was unmistakably Indian. Or Pakistani, a voice inside Sablok’s head warned him. The eyes were large and light brown and reminded him of Durga Puja in Calcutta.

  Half a decade had passed since he had last heard his former colleague’s name mentioned. His muscles tensed and his breathing became rapid. The headache and thoughts of whisky were forgotten: self-preservation did not defer to such trifles.

  A part of him cursed his own carelessness, remembering the wedge of wood that he hadn’t looked for when entering the hotel room. But he took a few deep breaths and steadied his thoughts. There would be time for self-recrimination later, if he survived with his wits intact.

  She seemed unarmed, almost conspicuously so. He could overpower her, and she seemed to know that too because she had positioned herself such that the bed and the other chair stood between them. He would reach her eventually, of course. Furniture wouldn’t stop him. But it would delay him by a few moments, and he wouldn’t reach her in time to stop her from letting out a loud scream or five. Sablok had lain awake well past midnight two days earlier because of a particularly vocal couple and their creaking bed in one of the rooms somewhere on the same floor, and he knew the walls wouldn’t keep the sound of her screams from the rest of the hotel.

  Then he noticed the clutch bag on her lap. It was large enough to hide a small calibre pistol. Her hands rested casually on it. His eyes had adjusted to the gloom now, and he could see blue veins snaking their way right underneath her skin. The tendons were relaxed, as if she did not anticipate needing to use the weapon. Or maybe she had done this many times before and knew she could reach the weapon and use it before he could reach her. He would have to lunge over the bed and go for her hands, hoping and praying that she fumbled while drawing the weapon. She seemed to follow his train of thought and smiled an easy smile. Sablok now knew she wouldn’t fumble.

  ‘My name isn’t Singh,’ he said, then paused for a moment, buying time. ‘And I am not a Havildar. Who are you? Why are you in my room?’

  She stared at him, her eyes fixed on his. He found himself looking at her hands. She didn’t react when he took a small step towards her even though he was sure she had noticed it. The pale hands remained on the clutch, long red nails now dancing to a beat he couldn’t hear. Perhaps it was a nervous tic. She made no effort to reach inside the clutch bag.

  ‘Chorizo Pao is such a delicious dish,’ she said, her voice steady, the tone almost buoyant.

  Her words were familiar, like a happy memory from childhood. He weighed his response carefully.

  ‘Too spicy. It gives me gas,’ he replied, enunciating each syllable slowly.

  ‘I find that Coconut Feni helps take the edge off it. Whatever fires remain afterwards can be quenched with Bebinca.’

  Sablok exhaled audibly. Her part of the code had been recited to perfection, right down to the questionable pronunciation of “Bebinca”. Almeida, the chief of the Europe section back home at the Wing, had set up this protocol to authenticate an agent to Sablok should the need arise, and had been incorrigibly Goan in his choice of code words. Something must have gone wrong, Sablok thought.

  ‘Captain—’ she began, but a raised hand stopped her mid-sentence.

  He stepped into the bathroom and opened all taps. The loud sound of water crashing into the half-filled tub filled the room. He opened the doors to the balconet—a narrow, false balcony—and winced at the harsh brightness of the morning. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and when they did, he did a quick sweep of the street below before motioning her over. The noise of everyday Paris had burst in and surrounded them, clashing with the sound of water and slicing through the silence.

  ‘I didn’t find any listening devices,’ she said, her voice low.

  They stood looking out onto the street below. He was leaning forward, his forearms resting on the warm balconet railing. She preferred to stand a few inches away, her back straight, hands holding the railing gently. She had left the clutch on the chair. The famous tower rose in the distance.

  ‘One of my school teachers lived here for a few years,’ Sablok said after a while, his mind wandering. ‘She said Paris was the most romantic place in the world. I cannot understand why anyone would feel that way.’

  It was a casual remark so out of place given the occasion that he himself couldn’t understand why he had made it. But the words were out of his mouth and there was no going back.

  Out of the corner of his eye he noticed the knuckles of her hand whiten as she tightened her grip on the railing.

  ‘It’s not the city,’ she said icily, ‘it’s who you share it with.’ A moment later, she continued, ‘As I said, I didn’t find any listening devices. Nor did I spot a tail on you when you walked into the hotel. You aren’t under surveillance yet, but this happy situation may not last long.’

  Her expression suggested that the situation was anything but happy, but nuances were lost on Sablok as he struggled to make sense of what was happening.

  ‘Why?’ he finally replied, the stretched syllable hanging in the air between them.

  ‘Your papers. A day after you reached Calais, the person who had prepared your passport was taken in by MI5.’

  ‘I received my passport in New Delhi,’ he replied. The dull headache in his head had quickly turned into a loud pounding.

  She wondered if the tone was meant to provoke.

  ‘Perhaps it was, but the backup passport—the one from that packet you found in locker Thirty-Nine at Gare du Nord—was prepared in a damp and, quite frankly, rather musty basement in London. The person who made that passport was apprehended.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘The inquisitors at 140 Gower Street have been at him for nearly seventy-two hours now.’

  ‘Leconfield House, you mean.’

  ‘They’ve recently relocated. Rather than stand here and debate facts about MI5, it would be better if you stepped into that bathroom and burned your backup passport. Pack up, wipe down the room, and prepare to leave in fifteen minutes.’ She sniffed loudly, a deliberate exaggeration to catch his attention. ‘Make that twenty minutes. Should give you some time for a shower. Don’t forget to staunch that wound on your left calf that has bled through your trousers.’

  Sablok looked down in horror at his leg that had bled through thick cotton and tried to remember when he had picked up that wound. It had to have been before he returned to the van having dumped Hussain’s body in the forest. Which meant that he had bled all along the drive back to Paris. He cursed himself. The van was evidence of a serious crime now.

  ‘I suggest you avoid shaving for now. We will need to have a new passport prepared for you, and it would help if you grew a beard over the next few days,’ she said, cutting into Sablok’s thoughts.

  ‘Days?’

  ‘You’re going to be here in Paris for at least another week, Captain. More if I can’t manage your papers locally.’

  Sablok stared at her.

  ‘I have
to rush to—’ he began.

  ‘Amsterdam has been cancelled. I need to get you out of here before MI5 or DST—the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, in case you didn’t know—show up in force.’

  ***

  When he went down to the lobby exactly nineteen minutes later, his suitcase in one hand and the knapsack on his shoulders, his scalp was still wet beneath a short layer of thinning hair that resembled a field full of burnt weeds. He asked the front desk clerk to pull up his bill. She was seated nearby. Seeing him descend the stairs, she walked up to the concierge and had a quick conversation. The rapid-fire French that both employed was far beyond Sablok’s capabilities, but it explained why Almeida had sent her.

  ‘Musée du Louvre,’ he heard her say.

  The concierge glanced in Sablok’s direction, eyes lingering on the left leg for a moment, but said nothing before returning his attention to Sablok’s companion.

  She was waiting in a taxi by the time Sablok had settled his dues. He kept the suitcase on the floor of the taxi between his feet; the knapsack remained on his lap. The drive to the Louvre took half an hour in morning traffic, and she made sure they alighted at a crowded intersection just before the museum. When Sablok saw the 12th century palace in the distance he allowed himself a brief smile.

  ‘I need to make a phone call,’ she told him.

  Walking away from the museum, it took them a few minutes to find a public telephone. Her conversation ended in less than a minute. Before Sablok could ask her what had transpired, she had hailed another taxi. As it drove towards them, Sablok cleared his throat to catch her attention. There were a hundred questions swirling in his mind, each getting in the other’s way.

  ‘What do I call you?’ he asked.

  ‘Call me Nissa.’

  Stepping inside the taxi, she mentioned their destination to the taxi driver. Sablok, who was five feet behind and yet to board, did not hear her.