Rising Tiger, page 17
Vijay found a roll of duct tape and tossed it to Harvath. As the ex-cop kept the four men covered, Harvath slung his weapon and went about taping wrists behind backs, followed by ankles.
The man with the broken hand made a lot of noise, forcing Harvath to place a piece of tape across his mouth before finishing the job. He decided, just in case, to gag the others as well. All of them, that was, except for Kumar. They had a lot of questions for him and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to understand him with a piece of duct tape across his mouth.
When he was done, he set up a chair in the center of the room, yanked Kumar up from the floor, and placed him in it.
“Someone is in big fucking trouble,” the gangster stated. “Big fucking trouble.”
Rahul Kumar couldn’t have been any taller than five foot four, maybe five foot four and a half on a good day with thick socks.
The man wasn’t filled with piss and vinegar; it was more like battery acid and snake venom. Flecks of spittle collected at the corners of his mouth as he raged. His eyes were wide with anger, showing their whites.
“I pay money, good fucking money, not to get raided,” he continued. “Not to have some thulla I’ve never seen before burst into my business and hold me at gunpoint. And with a fucking Gora no less! What the hell is this? I don’t even think you’re cops.”
“Clever, this one,” said Vijay, explaining the slang to Harvath. “A thulla is a corrupt, incompetent cop. Gora means whitey, or simply a white person. So, he could have called you worse.”
“I don’t doubt it,” replied Harvath.
“An American Gora?” the gangster exclaimed, reading Harvath’s accent. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Let me put it this way,” said Vijay, pointing at Harvath. “When this Gora shows up on your doorstep, it means that your day is going to get much, much worse.”
Kumar looked at Harvath and then back at the ex-cop. “What is it you want? What are you doing here?”
“Part of me wants to rent you better bodyguards and sell you some cameras,” Vijay responded, laying his shotgun on the desk. “It’s unfathomable to me that your competitors haven’t killed you yet and taken over your business. You don’t know the first thing about security.”
“Maybe I’ll hire you,” said Kumar. “Obviously paying off the local police isn’t doing me much good.”
“Sorry, Rahul. I don’t work for men like you. You have no honor.”
“Says the fake cop who, something tells me, isn’t here on behalf of the IPS. Who are you working for then? The Gora?”
Vijay stepped forward and grabbed the gangster by the throat. “I’m not here to answer your questions. You’re here to answer mine. Is that clear?”
“Teri-maa-ka-bhosda,” Kumar responded.
The ex-cop cracked him with his opposite hand—the one with the signet ring, catching the thug just beneath his left eye. “You bring my mother into this once more,” he warned, “and things are really going to get bad.”
“Bhenchod!” the main exclaimed.
Vijay hit him again, harder. “The same thing goes for my sister.”
Even from where he was standing, Harvath could see a nasty, blood-engorged welt swelling up on the man’s face. One more blow and Vijay was going to open Kumar up like an Indian piñata.
“Now, if we’re done talking about the women in my family,” the ex-cop stated, “maybe we can get down to business.”
Either because he had run out of insults or was wary of being struck again, Kumar remained silent.
“Good,” said Vijay. “Business it is. To whom did you sell Pinaki Ali’s motorbike?”
The gangster quickly looked away from him and then back. Not a good sign. He gave him another warning. “My friend, the Gora, is a human lie detector, but even I can see you’re trying to come up with some sort of story to tell me. Take my advice—don’t. If you lie, it’ll get even worse than if you start insulting my wife or my daughters. Do you understand?”
Kumar nodded.
“After you ‘stole’ the motorbike, what happened to it?”
The gangster took a deep breath. “You don’t want to know.”
“Do I strike you as a man who doesn’t want to know?” asked Vijay. “Because I’ll gladly hit you again if it’ll help clear things up.”
There was nothing better than a smart-ass cop. As he had with Mrs. Ali, Harvath tried not to smile.
“Listen, Rahul,” he continued. “You give us the information we want and we’ll disappear. You’ll never see us again. But if you don’t give it to us, you’ll disappear and no one will ever see you again. So, let’s stop playing games. What’s it going to be?”
Kumar was conflicted. “If I tell you what you want to know, I simply trade one set of problems for another. The person who arranged for that motorbike isn’t going to cooperate with you. He’s going to kill you. Then he’s going to kill your Gora. And after that’s done, he’s going to come here and kill my entire family.”
“Not if we kill him first,” Harvath chimed in.
Vijay let go of the gangster’s throat and stepped aside so Harvath could address him.
“Someone used that motorbike to kill a friend of mine. I’m going to settle the score.”
Kumar shook his head. “Everyone who has gone after this person has failed. He has been shot, stabbed, poisoned, thrown from a building, and hit by a car—twice. It’s said that he can’t die.”
“Believe me,” Harvath stated, “if I decide he needs to die, he’s going to die.”
“And judging by the attempts on his life,” Vijay interjected, “I’m guessing that you two know each other from the ‘business’ world.”
Kumar nodded.
“And if he ended up disappearing, you might be able to profit from his absence?”
The gangster thought about it for a moment before warily responding. “We would be expanding into new territory, but nothing we couldn’t handle.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes.”
“So here’s how this plays out,” said the ex-cop. “You’re going to give us everything you have on this person and we’ll take care of the rest. If you tip him off that we’re coming, if you try to ingratiate yourself and cause him to be indebted to you, we will make sure you lose everything. And I mean everything—your business, your family, your life. All of it. Is that clear?”
Once again, Kumar nodded.
“Good,” replied Vijay, picking up a pad of paper and a pencil from the closest desk. “Start talking.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, they left the office and closed the door behind them. Upon it they taped a sign that Vijay had written: Meeting in progress. Do not disturb. Do not knock.
Back at the Jaguar, they re-stashed their gear in the duffle bag and checked on Pinaki. Even parked in the shade, it had gotten quite warm in the trunk. The man was soaked through with perspiration. Vijay cut off his restraints and helped him out.
“Is he dead?” the man asked.
“Who?” Harvath replied as he placed the duffle inside. “Your boss, Kumar?”
Pinaki nodded.
“A little worse for wear, but still alive.”
“Does he know it was me? Does he know I told you where to find him?”
“He knows we were there about the motorbike,” said Harvath.
“You mean he knows you were there about my motorbike.”
“Technically,” Vijay clarified, “it’s your mother’s motorbike. She paid for it.”
“This is nothing to make fun of,” the man protested. “You promised me that if I helped you, you would protect us.”
Harvath looked at the ex-cop with a smile. “That is what you promised. You said that if—”
“I know what I said,” Vijay replied, checking his watch. “Give me another hundred dollars.”
Pulling the bills out of his pocket, Harvath peeled off another hundred and handed it to him. “I’m going to need a receipt for that. And from earlier.”
Vijay ignored him and handed the money to Pinaki. “Go home. Pack a suitcase for yourself and one for your mother. Then I want you to take an autorickshaw to the Jaipur Junction railway station. Go inside, get something to eat. When you have eaten, use a different exit and walk to the Radisson hotel. Then take a taxi to the Fairmont hotel. There will be an envelope with a keycard and a room number waiting for you at the front desk. Go to the room and stay there until I contact you. Do not tell anyone where you are. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” said Pinaki. “I understand.”
“Good,” said the ex-cop, as he closed the trunk. “Now hurry up. Get going.”
As they watched the man jog off, Harvath asked, “How are you going to get them into the Fairmont? It’s booked solid.”
“They’re taking your room and whoever it is that you’re working for is going to pay for it. It’s going to take me a day or two to figure out what to do with them. In the meantime, you and I are headed to Delhi.”
“And what about the name Kumar gave us? It looked to me like you recognized it.”
“I recognized it all right,” said Vijay.
“So you know him?”
“Yeah, I know him,” the man replied. “I’m the one who pushed him off the building.”
CHAPTER 34
NEW DELHI
Basheer Durrani was odd by Pakistani standards. Different. Unlike many of his ISI counterparts, he had actually spent time outside of Pakistan. Lots of it.
The son of a Pakistani diplomat, a large portion of his formative years had seen his family moving from country to country, diplomatic outpost to diplomatic outpost.
Thanks to his father, he was a citizen of the world. Thanks to his mother, he was a citizen of Pakistan—a true and devoted son.
She kept him honest in his religious practices, devoted in his politics, and educated in his responsibilities to his homeland. No matter how far abroad they traveled, he always felt deeply connected to Pakistan.
His mother was exceedingly well-read, and she shared her love of reading with him. Her taste in literature, however, was considerably one-dimensional.
From leading theorists of violent jihad such as Sayyid Qutb, to political arsonists like Niccolò Machiavelli, she was, in the truest sense, an extremist. And if, as the saying goes, strong mothers raise strong sons, can it not be expected for extremist mothers to raise extremist sons?
She was a poised and polished diplomat’s wife—stunningly capable for the daughter of a struggling textile merchant from Lahore. In her future husband she had seen a man of ambition, a man of potential.
It wasn’t until after she had married him that she realized he had no aspirations beyond the diplomatic corps. Despite his immense potential, he had no desire to enter national politics. He was a bitter disappointment to her. It made her doubly determined that their son would not be.
While his mother had lit a passionate flame inside him for Islam and the maintenance of a true Islamic republic, he had also been taken by the martial arts, particularly the way of the samurai, via several years spent living in Japan.
There were plenty of embassies in Tokyo’s Minato district, including Pakistan’s. There were also a ton of corporate headquarters, such as Honda, Mitsubishi, Nikon, Sony, and Yokohama. Foreign company headquarters like Goldman Sachs and Apple were also there. Durrani hated it.
He hated it, not because his mother detested capitalism, but because all of the glass and steel obstructed the real Japan.
He had discovered The Book of Five Rings, by the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, in the embassy library and had read it so many times within his first months there that he could recite it by heart. Written in 1645, that was Japan to him—pretty much anything up to the seventeenth century. After that, traditional Japan quickly began to recede.
The Book of Five Rings was Durrani’s on-ramp, his gateway drug, not only into traditional Japanese culture but also its more esoteric martial arts.
Wandering far afield of the embassy, and utilizing his burgeoning knowledge of the language, he began navigating Tokyo’s best dojos—often to be found in the city’s roughest neighborhoods—and in those dojos he absorbed a wide array of art forms.
He studied Nami ryu, Kūdō, and Kyokushin. He mastered the skills that would make him a superb intelligence operative—humility, hard work, and a keen attention to movement and detail.
He learned to be patient. He learned to control his breathing, his emotions, and, most important—his thoughts. Because only by conquering himself could he hope to conquer his opponents. And he had plenty of them.
Within a year of haunting various dojos, he began to compete in matches. But not just any matches. He began to fight in nonsanctioned, underground competitions.
He was only a teenager and even in underground Tokyo, honor was still observed. He was only allowed to fight other teenagers. The bouts acted as a novelty before undercard matches in the lead-up to the night’s main event. However, they were incredibly popular, with some teen fighters developing cultlike followings. Durrani wasn’t one of them.
He lacked the showmanship, the personal magnetism necessary to attract a following. Even as a teen he was cold—disturbingly so.
His mother blamed it on having to uproot and move so often. His father disagreed. He believed that the boy might have antisocial personality issues. The embassy doctor helped them to find a psychiatrist. The doctor prescribed medication.
Durrani took the pills for a couple of months and studied their effects. He paid particular attention to which changes in his personality his parents were most pleased with. Then he stopped taking the pills. He had never liked how he had felt on them.
Instead, he worked at toggling the traits his parents liked, on and off, like a light switch.
He realized that he could convincingly project any quality or emotion that was called for—empathy, kindness, sorrow, warmth, friendship, even love. It didn’t matter that he didn’t feel any of it. All that mattered was that he could use these things to get what he wanted from other people. It was, in essence, his “superpower” and he maximized it to his advantage.
Durrani became so good at manipulating people that he didn’t even need to think about it. It had become second nature to him.
He had all the makings of a perfect intelligence operative—remorseless, adaptable, and highly intelligent. And as was so often the case in the spy business, it took one to know one.
Shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Durrani was recruited by an ISI officer working out of Pakistan’s embassy to the United States—his father’s new posting.
The older man had struck up a friendship with Durrani over the Japanese game of strategy known as Go. Since leaving Tokyo, the teen had not had anyone to play with and the ISI officer had been a fan of the game for years.
He enjoyed being challenged by the teen and used the game to teach the young man about statecraft. Durrani was a quick study.
They stayed in touch while the young man attended university and upon graduation, the ISI officer made him an offer that was too good to turn down.
Durrani went through two years of intense, specialized military and intelligence training. He was then apprenticed under the older man, who taught him everything he knew.
The young man had dark hair, brown eyes, and an olive, rather than brown, complexion—provided he took care to stay out of the sun. His features allowed for him to pass as a member of any number of ethnic groups throughout South Asia, as well as in Europe, America, and the Middle East.
Eventually, Durrani had come to be based in India. His cover was working for an international aid organization based in New Delhi.
His work colleagues at the organization were a mix of Hindus and Muslims, so his faith, including his regular attendance of worship services at a local mosque, was not seen as unusual.
Via his credentials, he was able to move in and out of places like Kashmir, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Nepal—not to mention all over India—with ease. He was an incredible asset to the ISI. But he also had a very disturbing shortcoming.
Technically, he had two. And clinically speaking, both were fixations.
The first, dacryphilia, was one of the most unusual sexual fixations known to mankind. It was a state of arousal brought about by the sight of tears or the sound of someone crying.
What made dacryphilia, also known as dacrylagnia, so unusual was that the scent of a woman’s tears was known to lower testosterone and sexual desire in men.
This fetish was most often present in sadists who took pleasure in seeing others humiliated or in some sort of physical or emotional pain.
His other fixation was known as acrotomophilia—sexual interest in amputees. He found stumps incredibly erotic.
Put the two fetishes together—dacryphilia and acrotomophilia—and you had one very hard itch to “scratch.” Crying, amputee sex workers didn’t exactly grow on trees. Durrani, however, was resourceful. Better stated, he was well-connected. And in the world of rare and unusual sexual delights, the game was all about being as well-connected as possible.
As was the case with many spies, Durrani got some of his best information from others in the espionage game. That was how he had found a rather unique establishment in Bucharest called the “Terrace Club.”
Because of the friendly relationship between their two countries, many Romanian officers cycled through Pakistan’s School of Military Intelligence, outside Islamabad. That was where Durrani had met Alexandru Suliman. The two had established a nice friendship—or at least that was what Suliman had thought.
Wanting to further the relationship and see what intel he could pull from him, the ISI had sent Durrani to visit Suliman the following year. That was when his Romanian colleague had introduced him to the Terrace Club.
It was a veritable garden of mild to wild pleasures. Anything could be had at the Terrace, for the right price. And if they didn’t have it, they would get it. The options were limited only by a customer’s imagination, and his or her bank account.
