Line of Control (17 page)

    "Bob, all I'm saying is that it's like the house that Jack built,"

    Rodgers said.

    "One little thing leads to another and then another. Maybe it's not those things, but it's nothing good."

    "No, it is nothing good," Herbert agreed.

    "I still think we're overreacting but I'll get back to you as soon as we know anything. Meantime, I have just one suggestion."

    "What's that?" Rodgers asked.

    "Make sure you sleep on the flight to India," Herbert said.

    "One way or another you're going to need it."

    

    Kargil, Kashmir Thursday, 6:45 a. m.

    Ron Friday was annoyed that the call did not come from Hank Lewis. It came from Captain Nazir. To Friday, that meant on this leg of the mission Friday was reporting to New Delhi and not to Washington. That suggested the Black Cats would be watching him closely. Perhaps the Indian government did not want him talking to the NSA or anyone else about whatever they might find here. At least, not before they went on the mission.

    They were to go to a chicken farm in the foothills of Kargil.

    Apparently, an intelligence officer at Op-Center found a possible link between that location and the bazaar bombing.

    Op-Center did not tell Hank Lewis or their Black Cat liaisons why they thought the farm might be significant or what they believed that significance to be. All they said was that the situation in the bazaar was "atypical" and that the terrorists had to be taken alive. To Friday that translated as, "We aren't sure the terrorists did this and we need to talk to them."

    The pair flew to the farm in a fast, highly maneuverable Kamov Ka-25 helicopter. Captain Nazir was at the controls.

    The compact sky-blue chopper was one of more than two dozen Ka-25s India bought from Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed and the military began cutting costs. Friday was not surprised to be riding in a military bird. A black National Security Guard chopper would stand out. But the skies here were full of Indian military traffic.

    Ironically, taking an air force craft was the best way to be invisible on Pakistani radar.

    The men flew north at approximately two hundred feet, following the increasingly jagged and sloping terrain.

    Though their unusually low passage caused some agitation among sheep and horses, and curses from their owners, Nazir explained over the headset that it was necessary. The air currents here were difficult to manage, especially early in the morning. As the sun rose the lower layers of air became heated. They mixed violently with the icy air flowing down from the mountains and created a particularly hazardous navigation zone between five hundred and two thousand feet up.

    It troubled Friday that a single Pakistani operative with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher could take out the Ka-25 with no problem. He hoped that whatever information Op Center had received was not what the intelligence community called a "TM," a "tactical mislead," a lie precipitated by the desire to slow down pursuit by smoking out and eliminating the pursuers.

    The two men reached the farmhouse without incident. Before landing.

    Captain Nazir had buzzed the small barn and then the wood-and-stone farmhouse. An old farmer came out to see what was happening. He seemed surprised as he shielded his eyes to look up at the chopper.

    Nazir came in lower until he was just above the rooftop.

    "What do you think?" Nazir asked.

    "Is the farmer alone?"

    "Most likely," Friday replied. Hostages who had been kept a short while tended to be highly agitated, even panicked.

    They wanted to get to someone who could protect them.

    Even if there were other hostages at risk, including close family members, self-preservation was their first, irrepressible instinct.

    Hostages who had been held a long while were usually just the opposite.

    They had already bonded with their captors and were very standoffish, frequently antagonistic, The man below them was neither.

    Nazir hovered a moment longer and then set down on a nearby field.

    After the noisy forty-minute flight it was good to hear nothing but the wind. The cool breeze also felt good as they made their way to the farm.

    Nazir wore a 38 in a holster on his hip. Friday carried a derringer in the right pocket of his windbreaker and a switchblade in the left. The22 gun did not pack much punch but he could palm it if necessary and easily use it to blind an assailant.

    The farmer waited for the men to arrive. Friday made Apu Kumar out to be about sixty-five. He was a small, slope shouldered man with slits for eyes. His features seemed to have a trace of Mongolian ancestry.

    That was not uncommon along the Himalayas. Nomads from many Asian races had roamed this region for tens of thousands of years, making it one of the world's truest melting pots. One of the sad ironies of the conflict here was the fact that so many of the combatants had the same blood.

    The men stopped a few feet from the farmer. The farmer's dark, suspicious eyes looked them up and down. Beyond the house was the barn.

    The chickens were still squawking from the fly over "Good morning," Nazir said.

    The farmer nodded deeply, once.

    "Are you Apu Kumar?" Nazir asked.

    The farmer nodded again. This time the nod was a little less self-assured and his eyes shifted from Nazir to Friday.

    "Does anyone else live here?" Nazir inquired.

    "My granddaughter," the farmer replied.

    "Anyone else?"

    Kumar shook his head.

    "Is your granddaughter here now?" Nazir asked.

    The farmer shook his head. He shifted a little now. His expression suggested fear for his safety but now his body language said he was also tense, anxious. He was hiding something. Possibly about his granddaughter.

    "Where is she?" Nazir pressed.

    "Out," Apu replied.

    "She runs errands."

    "I see. Do you mind if we look around?" Nazir asked.

    "May I ask what you are looking for?" the farmer asked.

    "I don't know," Nazir admitted.

    "Well, go ahead," Apu said.

    "But be careful of my chickens.

    You've already frightened them once with your machine."

    He made a disdainful gesture toward the helicopter.

    Nazir nodded and turned. Friday hesitated.

    "What's wrong?" Nazir asked the American.

    Friday continued to look at the farmer.

    "Your granddaughter is one of them, isn't she?"

    Apu did not move. He did not say, "My granddaughter is one of who?" He said nothing. That told Friday a lot.

    Friday approached the farmer. Apu started backing away.

    Friday held up his hands, knuckles out. The derringer was in his right palm where the farmer could not see it. Friday watched both the farmer and the farmhouse door and window behind him. He could not be absolutely certain no was one inside or that Apu would not try to get a gun or ax or some other weapon just inside.

    "Mr. Kumar, everything is all right," Friday said slowly, softty.

    "I'm not going to do anything to you. Nothing at all."

    Apu slowed then stopped. Friday stopped as well.

    "Good," Friday said. He lowered his hands and put them back in his pockets. The derringer was pointed at Apu.

    "I want to ask you a question but it's an important one. All right?"

    Apu nodded once.

    "I need to know if you do not want to talk to us because you and your granddaughter support the terrorists or because they are holding her hostage," Friday said to him.

    Apu hesitated.

    "Mr. Kumar, people were killed yesterday when a bomb exploded in Srinagar," Captain Nazir said.

    "Police officers, pilgrims on the way to Pahalgam, and worshipers in a temple.

    Did your granddaughter have a hand in that or did she not?"

    "No!" Apu half-shouted, half-wept.

    "We do not support them. They forced her to go with them! They left yesterday.

    I was told to be silent or they said they would kill her. How is she?

    How is my granddaughter?" "We don't know," Nazir told him.

    "But we want to find her and help her. Have they been back here since the explosion?" Nazir asked.

    "No," Apu said.

    "One man stayed behind when the others left. He called and claimed responsibility for an attack. I heard him. But then he left suddenly at around five o'clock." "Suddenly?" Nazir asked.

    "He seemed very upset after talking to someone else on the telephone,"

    Apu told him.

    "As if something had gone wrong?" Friday asked. That would certainly confirm what Op-Center was thinking.

    "I don't know," Apu said.

    "He was usually very calm. I even heard him make jokes sometimes. But not then. Maybe something did happen."

    "If you came to Srinagar with us, would you be able to tell us what these people look like?" Nazir asked.

    Apu nodded.

    Friday touched Nazir's arm.

    "We may not have time for that," the NSA operative said. Whatever is happening seems to be happening very quickly.

    "Mr. Kumar, were your visitors Pakistani?"

    "Yes."

    "How many of them were there and how long did they stay with you?"

    Friday asked.

    "There were five and they stayed for five months," Apu told him.

    "Did you hear any of their names?" Nazir asked.

    "Yes," Apu said.

    "I heard "Sharab' but no last names."

    "Did they ever leave you alone?" Friday asked.

    "Only in our bedroom," Apu told him.

    "One of them was always on guard outside."

    "Did they ever mistreat you?" Friday asked.

    Apu shook his head. He was like a prizefighter who kept getting peppered with jabs. But that was how interrogations needed to be conducted. Once the target opened up the interrogator had to keep him open. Friday looked over at the stone barn.

    "Who took care of your chickens?" Friday asked.

    "I did in the morning and Nanda-that's my granddaughter-she took care of them in the late afternoon," Apu replied.

    "The Pakistanis were with you then?" Nazir said.

    "Yes."

    "How did your eggs get to market?" Friday asked.

    "The Pakistanis took them," Apu replied.

    That would explain how the terrorists had cased their target in Srinagar without being noticed. But it did not explain the field phone signal that came from here.

    "Do you or your granddaughter own a cellular telephone, Mr. Kumar?"

    Friday asked.

    Apu shook his head.

    "What did she do in her free time?" Friday pressed.

    "She read and she wrote poetry." "Did she always write poetry?" Friday asked.

    Apu said she did not. Friday sensed that he was on to something.

    "Do you have any of the poetry?" Friday asked.

    "In the room," Apu told him.

    "She used to recite it to herself while she worked."

    Friday was definitely on to something. He and Captain Nazir exchanged glances. They asked to see the poems.

    Apu took them inside. Friday was alert as they walked into the two-bedroom house. There was no one inside or anywhere to hide. There was hardly any furniture, just a few chairs and a table. The place smelled of ash and musk. The ash was from the wood-burning stove on which they also did their cooking. The musk, Friday suspected, was from their guests.

    Apu led them to the bedroom. He took a stack of papers from the drawer in the nightstand. He handed them to Captain Nazir. The poems were short and written in pencil. They were about everything from flowers to clouds to rain. Nazir read the earliest.

    It rained five days and flowers grew. And they stayed fresh and new- In my cart I kept a few To sell to all of you.

    "Not very profound," Nazir said.

    Friday did not comment. He was not so sure of that.

    The captain nipped through the others. The structure seemed to be the same in all of the poems, a "Mary Had a Little Lamb" cadence.

    "Go back to the first," Friday said.

    Nazir flipped back to the top sheet.

    "Mr. Kumar, you said Nanda recited these poems while she worked?" Friday asked.

    "Yes."

    "Is she a political activist?"

    "She is an outspoken patriot who was devoted to her parents," Apu said.

    "My daughter and son-in-law were killed resisting the Pakistanis."

    "There it is," Friday said.

    "I don't follow," Captain Nazir said.

    Friday asked Apu to stay in the bedroom. He led Nazir back outside.

    "Captain, there were five Pakistanis," Friday told him.

    "The woman mentions the number five in the first line of the first poem.

    The Pakistanis stayed here-she mentions that word too. She says something about her can going to market.

    The Pakistanis sold the eggs for her. Suppose someone got her a cell phone. Suppose the line was open and monitored twenty-four seven You said the poems don't seem very profound.

    I disagree."

    "She could have emphasized words that gave information to someone,"

    Nazir said.

    "Right," Friday said.