Bhagavad Gita: Islamabad Burning

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

Emma, Farouk, and Leo land in Pakistan, into a nightmare situation.



The plane banked smoothly and began to move in for the landing, the pilot's voice informing the passengers of the fact over the intercom. Farouk looked out through the window just as the Gulfstream V broke through the cloud cover and sighed morosely. He loathed Islamabad; a city that appeared out of nothing in the 60s and was still an ugly urban landscape of utilitarian buildings, dusty streets and the vapid idea of 'modernity' as it appeared to Pakistan 50 years ago.

But such was life.

He glanced across the aisle, but Frost's face was hidden by the enormous sunglasses. She was probably still sulking. But the idea of landing at Rawalpindi US Air Force base was simply unacceptable. That relic of the American presence in the region throughout the Cold War was under constant observation, both by the regime (whoever that was at the moment), by the Chinese, the Indians and God knows who else.

Chances were their arrival into the country was not in any way covert, with the amount of the people involved leaks were well nigh inevitable. But Islamabad International would give them at least half a chance of fading into the woodwork.

"I don't sulk," said Emma, not bothering to turn her head towards Farouk. "I haven't sulked since I was nine years old. If you must know, I'm despising the idiocy that says the risks of having our cover blown by coming in through Rawalpindi are lower than the risks of having our brains splattered across the tarmac in Islamabad when the whole country is going mad. Well, your brains, anyway." She shrugged slightly. "I am hardly likely to go unnoticed in an Islamic country, Farouk, even if I did bother with trying to blend in." She reached up and irritably twitched her white scarf up so it covered the shining platinum fall of her hair.

"I did offer you a burqa, Ms. Frost." Amahl pointed out mildly. "And I am less worried about our cover blown, than the fact that General Ahmed has been arrested and replaced as the Chief of Air Staff. Suffered a tragic accident on the way to prison." Amahl paused for effect. "He was being transported by the military police."

Emma's eyes narrowed minutely above the folds of the Armani scarf, as she absently pulled down her sunglasses, clicking them against her seat as her mind calculated the implications of the news.

Farouk turned turned slightly, clarifying for Samson. "He was the head of the Air Force. The Pakistani military is fracturing - which means it's a whole new ball game down there. The army usually stands as a united faction. If they have began knifing each other, that means there's practically no force left that will be able to stabilize the country quickly if the things spiral completely out of control."

He leaned back toward the window. "And, paradoxically enough, for the time being we are actually safer in the chaos of the civilian airport. Especially until we know who was involved in the Srinagar bombing and has a stake in us also having an unfortunate high-speed collision."

"I have no objection to avoiding high-speed collisions," Leo responded dryly, looking up from his laptop. "Though at the moment, I'm more concerned about the chaos of the roads than the chaos of the airports." He turned his attention back to an open email on the laptop. "I'm supposed to be meeting a friend tonight at Shifa College of Medicine--classes are canceled, but he supervises one of the student hostels." Leo read the email again and shook his head. "Everyone at the college is...nervous, to say the least."

"With good reason." Farouk muttered as the plane's landing gear touched down on the tarmac.

Chaos and the brink of revolution or not, the private jet and the money it represented still conferred a considerable cache of power. In combination with the impeccable and conveniently genuine documentation that Emma produced, the beleaguered airport administrator was happy to accommodate the the imperious head of the Frost Enterprises. It paid to be on the good side of the Powers That Be at the times like these, and for all he knew the crazy infidel woman really could get the head of Army Procurement on the phone...

Farouk stayed in the background smiling genially and spreading his arms in apology a lot. Samson just scowled grimly. All in all it went quite well, and by the time they disappeared into the maze of corridors usually reserved for the staff, Amahl was reasonably certain that the news would spread quickly about a pushy American bitch, her hapless secretary and a hulking brute of a bodyguard.

He smiled contentedly as they made their way through the city in an unobtrusive looking taxi that Nasrallah's people arranged for them. When secrecy was impossible, misdirection would serve just as well.

The car bounced on yet another pothole, its shocks out of date by at least a decade, and Farouk winced. No doubt he was going to get an earful, soon enough. Frost didn't strike him as the kind of person that took to traveling in anything but the products of German engineering. And the '82 VW probably didn't count. This time he remembered to carefully shield, however. No need to poke the cobra with a stick unnecessarily, after all.

The traffic soon wound to a crawl, the thoroughfares of Islamabad clogged with people, cars and animals. Martial law, declared shortly after the bombing, was still holding, but a pall was hanging over the capital, perceptible and dark, visible in the scared eyes of the Punjabi shopkeepers, in the uncertain faces of recruits manning the checkpoints and in the grim bearded countenances of the Pashtun hillmen, looking naked without their customary guns.

The city was waiting, visibly girding itself for the cataclysm it knew instinctively was coming.

Farouk was looking out of the window just as the traffic light changed and the car began to move again. Yet those split seconds were enough for a microcosm of a drama to unfold, the angry words turn to shouts, the fist replaced by knives and as they sped away he saw the crimson blood staining the pavement and the body of a Baluchi tribesman twisting in his death rattle, in the dust.

He turn, just in time to catch Emma's eyes in the rearview mirror and Samson's slightly horrified stare.

"We better hurry, my friends."

Emma nodded. "Once we're at the compound, we need to split up." There would be no hotel for them on this stay; Farouk's contact had arranged for a reinforced and well-guarded compound to be available for their exclusive use.

"I've lost Dar, but I've a cordial enough relationship with Qamar at the Finance Ministry. He doesn't have the depth of knowledge but I should be able to gain some idea of whether he thinks any of the rogue units of the military had anything to do with this mutant turned bomb. Then I'm having dinner this evening with Janjua and his rather charming wife." She clarified as Leo's thoughts became puzzled. "Quartermaster General of the Pakistan military. If anyone can tell me about possible procurements and if they've lost any nuclear tech, it'll be Lieutenant General Janjua. I won't require either of you along for those visits. If anything, you would be a hindrance to the free flow of information." She sighed. "If Khan sold his secret to the tribesmen. Or the Taliban . . ." Her voice trailed off. "If we're very, very lucky someone will kill the good doctor as revenge. For anything."

Farouk nodded in subconscious agreement. The father pf the Pakistani nuclear program, A. Q. Khan had turned out to have a soul of an entrepreneur. And if he could sell the design to the North Koreans... Heaven only knew what other customers he acquired.

She became brisk again. "I'll make sure the guards at the compound are loyal. Whether they want to be or not. If anyone doubles over and their brains bleed out their ears while we're there, assume they were planning to kill you and I got in first."

Emma's grasp of the ethical implications of using her telepathy to over-ride the will of others had always been tenuous, but it disappeared completely when her personal safety was at risk. "Farouk, Leo, your plans? Do we need to make further arrangements? I have a number of resources I can make available if required." She stared dispassionately out of the window at the imminent signs of chaos around them, quietly loathing the heat and the dust and the failure of rational thought that had brought her to Pakistan.

Amahl was far from certain that splitting up, even as the entire misbegotten country seemed determined to come apart at the seams, was a good idea. But from what little he had seen of Frost she was unlikely to be convinced that she was making a mistake. The peremptory change of the conversation to the details and consequences, as if the matter was already settled, the imperious body language of ignoring them as she gazed out of the car... No, any attempt to reason with the woman would just be interpreted as attack, and he needed to remain on at least the most basic of amiable terms with her. Allah only knew what else would go wrong before they were through here. Let Frost believe she was in charge, the Prophet willing, it would make her more amenable to his suggestions when it really counted.

He twisted his mustache slightly and shrugged. Perhaps it was for the best, he was far from enthusiastic about revealing his sources to these amateurs...

"Your connection within the military are truly impressive, Ms. Frost." Amahl said out loud. "I shall do my humble best to try and acquire what data I can through the political channels. The ever-gracious Mrs. Bhutto has agreed to receive me, despite the short notice."

And there's absolutely no need for either of you to know that I have an in with the ISI. Farouk decided as he turned to look inquisitively at Leo. Not least, because I am not certain just how much I can trust my good friend Nasrallah anymore...

"I'll be meeting an old friend at Shifa, and two doctors with medicines sans frontiers." Leo paused for a moment, thinking. "You know, my sister dated a law student in college--she's now clerking for Justice Qaiser Iqbal. If I can get her contact information from Sam, she might have some information we could use." He glanced out the window, and frowned. "Emma, I might request any assistance you could provide in traveling--I'd need to get to Karachi."

Emma nodded. "The jet will be free and at your disposal for travel; just make sure you give Gavin enough time to file a flight plan before you leave. I have a number of staff here in Islamabad; I'll organize a driver and a bodyguard for you. They'll be available whenever you leave the compound." Idly, she watched a shouting match drift past their window, the first gun drawn just as their car made the turn. "Three bodyguards," she amended.

She turned her attention back to those within the car. "What do you think?" she asked. "We're going into this relatively blind, gentlemen. Any ideas on who the Sons of Bakr may be?" She frowned in some concern. "I don't want to believe it's the military - even rogue military - but there are not that many people who have the kind of technology you need to weaponise mutants. And after Khan, I wouldn't trust the ISI as far as I could kick them. Final revenge for Musharraf's fall, perhaps. Or," and Emma shuddered lightly at the implications, "is it Afghanistan? Or India?" The thought of a foreign government, even one as inept as the Taliban's insane mullahs, taking pre-emptive action against Pakistan was enough to leave Emma cold.

Farouk grimaced. "I hate to say it, but perhaps resigning ourselves to starting from a blank slate might be the best idea. Any preconceptions might prove fatal, in the environment as fluid as this. For instance," He nodded to Emma "the idea of clandestine military operation is extremely credible, but on the other hand - depending on the exact nature of mutation we are dealing with - the weaponization might have have consisted largely of religious instruction and could have required the most minimal of resources."

He frowned, absently reaching up to tug on his mustache again. As he shuffled the mental cards of the players in the Pakistani arena, he missed completely the amused gleam in Emma's eyes as she glanced sidelong at stone-faced Samson, both very carefully avoiding looking directly at Farouk's whiskers.

As the car slowed softly and made a turn to park in an alley next to a carefully nondescript building, Amahl swore softly in Arabic, letting his frustration show.

"It could literally be anyone considering the snakepit this place has become in the last generation. It might have been our favorite, and recently former, benevolent dictator Musharraf, attempting to unite the country behind himself through a threat of war with India, although I find that unlikely. It might have been one of the opposition leaders - like Bhutto or Sharif, who now think they can get the crown. Personally I'm prone to look toward that noble shield of the Pakistani people - the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence. They have never given up on the grand dream of Kashmir reconquest, and they have been increasingly sidelining the Military Intelligence in their operations there. Channeling a lot of would-be holy warriors from Afghanistan, at that. Playing out their delusions of being the CIA of Southeast Asia and all that. But all of that is guesswork, nothing more."

"Then perhaps we should set a time to meet, or conference call within the next day or so," Leo suggested, "Share any leads and plan from there?"

"Seems reasonable," Amahl grunted as he got out of the car, holding the door for Emma and offering her a hand. He carefully hid the smile as a cautious probe showed that the blank-faced guards outside the compound were shielding. "Should we say tomorrow, around midnight?"

#####

It was, Emma decided, deeply depressing to have the person you were speaking to placed under house arrest while you were still in the middle of meeting them. Luckily the military gentlemen sent to arrest Qamar had not been trained in psychic resistance and simply over-looked her presence in the house. Qamar had protested sternly at the intrusion, but after Musharraf's arrest, the fall of the remaining Ministers had only been a matter of time.

At least Qamar only had house arrest. The pictures of what had happened to some of the other Ministers had been clear in the mind of the unsmiling young Colonel who had sought to arrest them. Qamar had the good sense not to resist, at least.

The conversation they had managed before they were so rudely interrupted had confirmed something for Emma, at least. The Finance Ministry had not been involved in funding the Sons of Bakr. In fact, Qamar's thoughts had made it clear that the Ministry had been as surprised by the bombing and as ignorant of the Sons as anyone else. The funding of the madrassahs and the border tribes, as the government tried to appease the tribes and lessen the influence of the Taliban, did not extend as far as funding a group willing to slaughter a city.

Emma sank thoughtfully back into the seat, turning over the remaining possibilities. Qamar's information almost completely ruled out the Pakistani government being involved in the bombing. That left the military and the ISI as the only other possible official in-country sponsors of the Sons of Bakr. Janjua would hopefully clarify the role of the military, or at least give some clues as to whether the push for power from different factions had started this.

The other hope she had was that Janjua may have some insight into a word that had flashed through the young Colonel's head. It had been so fleeting that she had nearly missed it, so fleeting that it was almost as if the Colonel had been trained not to think about it. But Qamar had mentioned the elephant, the bombing in Srinagar, and the word came into the Colonel's head, caught and killed almost before he had time to think it.

Deathbird.

For an instant the night sky lit with fire as the car drove past a building that burned and then the light disappeared into the darkness that settled over Islamabad.

The city held its breath.

####

Under normal circumstances, Leo would have been feeling elated--a private and one on one meeting with Justice Iqbal, one of only two Justices at Sindh High Court. Unfortunately, that elation was tempered by the information he'd obtained from both Justice Iqbal and his colleagues.

Fawad hadn't changed much in the five years since Leo had met him in Miami--still arrogant, brilliant, and stubborn. But despite the arrogant delivery, Fawad had been certain of his findings. So had Davidson, who was currently helping out with MSF in Sringanar.

It had been Iqbal's conversation that troubled him the most. There had been fear in her eyes, fear and uncertainty. Whoever was behind this attack was keeping their secrets close.

####

Farouk ran through the equipment check one more time, feeling slightly foolish. None of his precautions would matter of his compatriots weren't as careful, but good habits were worth keeping up. He sighed and shrugged as he put it on speaker. It looked clean.

"Ms. Frost, Dr. Samson? Can you hear me?"

"Perfectly," said Emma, with a chill in her voice. She would have been willing to undertake the conference telepathically, but she wasn't going to let the thing in Farouk's head within even the most basic of her outer shields. She checked the various scramblers again, ensured herself they were working adequately, relaxed minutely.

"Reading you both clearly," Leo replied, double-checking the detailed instructions Emma had provided on how to operate the scramblers. "I hope either of you has some good news, because I'm afraid all the information I've uncovered is..." Leo paused for a moment, and then continued after clearing his throat slightly, "...not optimistic.

"I doubt anything about this investigation can be considered optimistic," said Emma. "Let us hope we can manage informative at least." She sighed. "Qamar was arrested as I was talking to him. Islamabad is starting to burn. I've had to organize to evacuate all of my staff before the government shreds itself to pieces because I'm not letting them take my people with them." Her voice was tight with suppressed fury as she spoke; Emma loathed people who threatened her staff. "I've gathered - pieces of information. Shreds. I'm not sure which ones are important and which ones aren't. Farouk," she said. "You've been piecing everything together from the other teams. Would you care to provide Leo and I with a summary?"

Farouk sat back heavily, rubbing his temples. "First - you will probably hear soon enough. Bhutto is dead. They are censoring the news but I guarantee the veracity of the information."

As well he could, Amahl thought, ignoring the sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

The meeting had been frustrating and brief, the woman insufferable. She clearly saw no limit to what could be accomplished in the chaotic morass of intrigue, ambition and terror that Pakistan has become in the last week. When he cautiously broached the topic of reconciliation between her own party and Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League, she exploded in an unfeigned paroxysm of rage. Apparently the other opposition leaders was as blind to the stakes as she was and now...

He closed his eyes momentarily, remembering the sharp, insistent ring of the cellphone as he shouldered his way down the street, away from Bhutto's compound, letting his frustration out by bulling through the milling crowd. Nasrallah's voice, shrill with warning and panic, and then the explosions as Farouk instinctively dropped flat on the ground.

Three helicopters, the squat bulky shapes of the Russian machines silhouetting across the sky, showering the fortress-like estate with missiles and machine guns. And then the assault teams streaking into the burning building to finish off the survivors. The military had to be involved... They still had enough control of the airspace over the capital, at least.

Farouk sighed. "I think we should leave the capital as quickly as possible. There are already street battles between the party militias. The garrison is coming apart, from what I can tell."

"The news from our colleagues in India, Professor?" Emma reminded him coolly. "We are well versed in the conditions outside the window."

Amahl made a face at the phone and reached for the folder with the communiques. "Let me see... Well, first of all, it's past guesswork now and a certainty - there was no fissionable materials at the site. Ms. Guthrie assures me that it means that the perpetrator was definitely a mutant."

Leo hurramphed somewhat derisively, his snort carrying clearly over the phone. Farouk sighed. " Yes, I tend to agree, but I suppose they had to confirm even the most obvious of things. In any case, they also assured me that their investigation proves without a doubt that the mutant terrorist had to be 'augmented.' So we are dealing with a program that is sophisticated enough and amply, very amply, funded, capable of engaging in genetic modification of mutants for military purposes. That's mostly the gist of of it from the science people..."

Farouk paused, awaiting comments, but apart from a slightly impatient finger tapping from Frost there was no reaction. "Right. Mr. Kane's team, turned up rather more interesting tidbits. They have traced these Sons of Bakr to madrasah outside of Jalalabad. Apparently they are what they say they are, an offshoot of the Taliban, which is apparently not radical enough for them."

"There's not enough money in there to finance anything like this," Emma stated. "The sort of weaponisation we're talking about is - costly." Beyond costly, she thought silently. The sums involved would bankrupt small Caribbean nations although, admittedly, that was not a particularly difficult feat. "They obviously had outside assistance."

Amahl rolled his eyes but kept his tone even. "Yes, that was Mr. Kane's conclusion as well. Which makes the following relatively interesting - the night before these holy warriors crossed into Kashmir, there was an attack on a Pakistani complex. Mundane enough, these days, I suppose, except they hit a wall of total data blackout surrounding that event. Unusual for a seimple terrrorist attack. I had a bit more luck digging into the details - specifically it appears to have been a rather extensive research facility - but more on that in a moment. Ms. Maximoff has also developed some promising links, between the mercenaries who struck the facility and the Sons of Bakr. They are continuing to follow up on it, but with limited success so far."

Farouk threw the dossier on the table. "I spoke to my contacts here and a couple of things look interesting. The problem, of course, is that with the level of instability here I am not sure if any of it can be trusted or is it poisoned bait, as one faction tries to use us against another. I think we need to collate and compare against each other's findings."

"To start with, I think I can confirm some of your data, Amahl." Leo glanced down at his notes. "I got this from a colleague at Shifa--Dr. Fawad had recently heard rumors of, as he termed it, 'irregular' research involving mutants. Several new doctors or residents had suddenly acquired a second job providing them with, ah, 'ample' extra income--Fawad didn't know what the research consisted of, but it was related to mutants, and was definitely not tied to any study or official institution." He shook his head in disgust. "What's concerning though is that Justice Iqbal was certain the government was not involved with this--at least not officially. Though..." Leo trailed off, reading his notes again. He frowned and rapidly flipped through to his meeting with Davidson, and then flipped back to compare the information with the notes from the meeting with Iqbal.

"Though what, Leo?" Emma's voice came through the phone suddenly, sounding a little irritated, and Leo blinked, realizing he'd been silent for several minutes.

"Sorry," he apologized, "I got distracted. Hmm...Iqbal was sure that this wasn't government sanctioned--though I suppose she wouldn't know about any splinter groups within the government, but when I talked with Fatima, her clerk, she remembered a friend seemed to think that a General Khan might have some involvement." He shrugged, forgetting that Farouk and Frost couldn't see him. "What involvement, she didn't say, but she did say contacting Khan had become very difficult."

"Anything else?" asked Emma.

"Not that I'm aware of," replied Leo, a touch of helplessness in his voice.

"His name was Deathbird," said Emma quietly. "Or the program's name was Deathbird. Or the facility's name was Deathbird." She had worked through the information she had obtained, both openly and by slicing through minds, and the conclusions she had come to were disturbing. "Farouk's right. The army is coming to pieces. But it started before Srinagar went up." She stopped, took the time to articulate the connections that were coming clear to her.

"There was a Colonel, the one who arrested Qamar. When Qamar mentioned Srinagar, he thought of Deathbird, and then deleted the thought. When I mentioned it to Janjua, he nearly fainted. There's a cabal of Colonels; the second tier officers, the ones that aren't invested in Pakistan-as-is. They want glory and power and at least some of them are fairly intent on some serious Islamisation; they've been spending too long amongst the border tribes and it's rubbing off. Something - someone - is driving it all. Gathered them together, gave them purpose, but Janjua's only got edges of it." She frowned. "He's old-Pakistan and the odds of him surviving if the cabal take power are minimal. His wife was terrified," she added clinically.

"But Janjua knew enough to know that Deathbird was associated with the facility that's involved in the mutant's weaponisation. More than likely it was raided to get the mutant out. Whether the Sons of Bakr took out a mutant the Colonels were intending to use or whether the Colonels were in on it with the Sons . . . " Emma shrugged. "Janjua didn't have that sort of information. But the Colonels are taking advantage of the chaos, whether they caused it or not."

"Or whoever it is that's using them..." Farouk chuckled in contemptuous disgust. "Someone's gotten ambitious. This gang of half-wits think they can replicate Nasser's coup. But this isn't Egypt and there are twice as incompetent. I think they are in a panic-mode, didn't expect the army or the country to come apart so very comprehensively." He stood abruptly, beginning to pace around the small room. "Probably covering their trail with mounds of dead bodies and loose ends."

"Your analysis of current events is as fascinating as ever," said Emma, making no attempt to disguise her boredom. "Do you have any facts that may be useful to working out why Deathbird went boom?"

Amahl stopped to slowly extend the middle finger and pump the the fist up and down vigorously, wagging the digit at the phone with silent glee. "Yes, of course, Ms. Frost, you're absolutely right. Pardon my digression."

He resumed his pacing, his voice mild as he tried to order the pieces of information into a credible mosaic. "Something doesn't compute. My ISI contacts are swearing on everything holy and unholy that the Sons of Bakr are not affiliated with the army. Now, since they completely missed the mutant-slicing program under their own noses, I don't know how much faith we can afford to put in the competence on this issue - but let's play the hand out. Say we have this cabal out for a power grab. They start by building a power base within the army and an ace up their sleeve with the mutant weaponization program. But these are military men, they would parlay this into a coup - sparking a war that's more likely than not to turn nuclear is an insane gamble."

Farouk rubbed his bridge of his nose meditatively. "Also, if the Sons were to be used as a cover, why stonewall all the news of the raid on the facility? They would want the world to know. It paints Musharraf's regime as incompetent, they can use it as a lever and have him as a perfect scapegoat. Yes, there would be slaps on the wrist from the 'international community,' but it's open knowledge that both Pakistan and India are doing this. Hell, everyone is! And they could have planned in advance on a plausible scenario and could have completely insulated themselves from the connection to the program. But this has all the smell of shock to it. I've looked at the ripples and the local spooks confirmed it - first a total blackout of information, than rapidly increasing destabilization within the army. Officers disappearing, suffering accidents, etc. They started erasing their ties to the operation after the fact, not before."

Farouk nodded to himself, the strands knitting themselves into a whole behind his eyes. "I strongly suggest that these people were caught absolutely flat-footed by the raid. From what I was able to gather the program was still in relative infancy, still behind their Indian equivalent by a decade at least. I don't think they were ready to make their move yet. Somebody made it for them."

"It's all still very circumstantial, isn't it?" Leo spoke. "Convincing, don't get me wrong, but..."

Farouk bared his teeth in a silent snarl. This wasn't a damn courtroom and they didn't have the time to build a case that would satisfy the fucking UN!

"True." He reached back for the file. "Unfortunately, I have mostly exhausted the sources that could offer anything concrete. There's one more lead, but I am dubious about pursuing it. This gentleman has furnished bad information to me before and I get the distinct impression that he desperate enough to get out of the country to say anything. He offered me the name of the supposed leader of the Sons, but since there's no way to verify that..."

"What was the name?" asked Emma.

Farouk consulted his notes. "Hamal ibn Aza ibn Jabir al_Nabari."

"What?!" Leo sat straight up suddenly, causing all of his papers and notes to fall off his lap onto the floor, and bumping the phone off the table. He grabbed for it quickly and caught it before the connection was broken. Emma and Farouk were asking what was wrong over the line, but Leo cut them off urgently. "Amahl--Fatima mentioned him--he's General Khan's aide!"

"Well," Farouk paused mid-step and smiled catlike at the news. Coincedences.

How exciting...

General Selim Khan had once been the commanding officer of Pervez Musharraf, and his mentor. He broke with his student shortly after the coup. Foolishly broke with him, considering that his student now held supreme power. A hero of the last two wars with India, Khan's popularity with the citizenry was such that Musharraf had simply sent him away to an insignificant post on the Iranian border, rather than have him quietly killed or loudly exiled.

After years in relative obscurity there were dark rumors about his passing a year ago, that prompted a couple of ugly protests. Even more interestingly, Khan, under the Sharif administration, had been the military liaison at the Intelligence Bureau, the secret police.

Some said his break with Musharraf came because the new dictator wanted to take away Khan's position as the broker between the army and the IB. Some said that it came for more personal reasons. An ill-advised marriage or perhaps, instead, a marriage too well advised.

"Well, well, well. Perhaps we should pay the estimable Rafiq a visit after all." Amahl's smile slid off his face like water. "And someone should probably update Mr. Kane."