The Delhi Deception (36 page)

Then he was quiet. His head rested in defeat on his chest, tears streaming down his face. The silence was oppressive. After what felt like an eternity, Elouise said, “We have to do something. Harry, if you want to redeem yourself, we must stop this.”

Harry looked up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “I know, Elouise, I know.” With an assertiveness that startled both the women he said, “Carla, how tight are your cable ties?”

“Well, actually—” Her voice cracked; she coughed and continued, “They tied it so tightly the first time that I remembered to keep my wrists a little apart this morning when they tied me up again.”

“Do you think you could wriggle a hand free?”

“I’ll try.”

Elouise was also struggling with her ties and said, “Imagine it’s a bangle that’s too tight. Mine aren’t as tight as yesterday, either. I might have a chance.”

“Keep trying. We only need one pair of free hands.” And getting to his feet, Harry said, “I’m going to look around to see if I can find something sharp.”

Carla had rubbed her wrists raw; gritting her teeth, she persevered.

Elouise stopped and said, “Listen, I think someone’s coming.”

Harry ran back to the mattress and sat down. Ali and the guard and the dog were at the door. He unlocked it and came in, saying, “Get up. Come.” He pointed toward the stairs and walked ahead.

The morning was hot, but the sun not yet overhead. Carla judged the time to be between ten and eleven. They were shoved through a metal door, and the cool air-conditioned interior was a welcome relief. The enormous, brightly lit room was a hub of activity. Young men wearing jeans and black T-shirts were packing boxes, while women in hijab and older men in kurta pajamas carried wrapped packages carefully out through the front door.

An internal door opened, and a gigantic man with an unlit cigar held between his teeth stormed out. With a forbidding look, he strode toward Harry, Elouise, and Carla. He looked from Elouise to Carla for a few seconds. Then laughing, he said, “Ali, you bloody fool, why didn’t you tell me we had such beautiful company. I could’ve entertained our guests.” He leaned toward and drew his face level with Carla’s. She shrank back in terror. He touched her cheek, gently running the back of his index finger down the contours of her face. With a sneer, he pinched the skin on her cheek between his fingers, drawing blood. Screaming, she fell back against Elouise and Harry.

This brought on another bout of raucous laughter. “What a pity, such lovely ladies.” Turning to Ali he said, “Lock them upstairs until we’re done.” He then strode out the main door and called to someone outside.

Carla and Elouise looked questioningly at Harry, but he shook his head as Ali led them up the stairs and into a different, smaller room, a single filthy blanket crumpled on the cement floor. Elouise asked for water, but she was ignored. They were shoved inside with so much force that they stumbled and landed in a heap. The key was turned in the lock behind them.

The room was not more than two meters square and was oppressively humid. A small, brick vent was the only source of light and air. It looked and felt like a cell. Carla sat down heavily on the hard floor and said, “Shit, shit, shit. Now what?”

Elouise burst into tears, sobbing loudly. Harry was distraught, half mumbling to Elouise or himself, “What have I done? I was such a fool. Please, please forgive me.”

Carla, slightly embarrassed by the display of such raw emotion, walked to the door and, putting her ear to it, listened to the commotion downstairs. Harry came up next to her. “What do you think they’re doing?” Carla asked him.

“I think they are clearing out. My guess is that they will move closer to the target area, disband the nonessential members for the time being, and get ready for their attack.”

“What are they going to do with us?”

Sighing, he lowered his voice and said, “I don’t know, but either way we must try to escape. We know too much. I don’t think they’ll kill us soon. They might still need me. There could be complications with the dirty bombs. After the mission, who knows?”

Elouise wailed loudly. “What about my babies? Oh, Harry, how could you? I hate you!” She started screaming hysterically.

Carla bent over her and said, “Please, Elouise, now’s not the time. We have to get out of here.”

Elouise, curled up in a fetal position, was whimpering like a mortally wounded animal. Harry tried to approach her, but she screamed, and he retreated. They sat motionless for a while. Then Harry got up and started shuffling along the walls. He told Carla that he was looking for something sharp.

After a while, Eloise turned her head to Carla and said, “If you manage to get out alive and I don’t, promise you’ll take care of my girls. Get them to my parents in the States.”

“We’ll get out of here. One way or another.”

“Oh, if only I could be as optimistic as you.”

“Shh!” His ear to the door, Harry said, “I think they’ve left. I heard two trucks or vans leaving.” He turned resolutely. “We have to get out of here.”

George walked into the control room for the fifth time in an hour and said, “Hey, Jim, found anything yet?”

The bespectacled intelligence specialist sighed and said, “George, I told you I’ll call you the minute I find something.”

George ignored him and walked toward the screen of satellite images. He looked at the date and time on the right-hand corner and said, “There he is, leaving the container depot. What is he carrying?”

Peering at the screen, Jim said, “Looks like those metal camera suitcases.”

“OK, next?”

As he scrolled forward to the next day, George stopped him. “He’s getting out.” They watched him entering a building. A well-built man followed, and then they both exited a few minutes later, getting into a mustard-yellow Tempo Matador. Jim zoomed in to read the license plate, but the angle made it impossible. The Tempo headed east, and then it stopped again in a congested residential area. The buildings were very close together, laundry hung on a line between them, impeding their tracking of the van. They picked up the signal again five minutes later and followed it to the train station. A man dressed in kurta pajamas got out of the driver’s seat. He walked to the back of the van and opened the doors, and a youth dressed in a pathani suit jumped out with a suitcase.

“Zoom in on that suitcase,” George ordered.

“Not the same one; this one looks like black nylon,” Jim said, adjusting his glasses.

The youth touched the older man’s feet and walked into the station. He turned around to wave, and the older man got back into the driver’s seat and drove off. He drove back to the residential area and parked in a narrow lane. He got out alone and entered a building.

“No one else has gotten either in or out of that van for eighteen hours,” Jim said, pursing his lips. He fast-forwarded the images to eighteen hours later: the same man got into the van alone and drove away. “No sign of our Dr. Singh,” Jim said and leaned back in his chair to drink the rest of his coffee from a mug printed with the CIA insignia.

George rubbed his eyes and sat down next to him. “My guy intercepted the youth on the train to Amritsar. The suitcase contained clothes and religious books.” He sighed; frowning, he said, “So our Dr. Singh is either hidden somewhere, or they changed cars. Have you trained the satellite on the yellow Tempo since?”

“No, we haven’t. We’ve been watching the residential area, and some of our local field agents have been checking it out, but no sign of him or the yellow van.”

“We’re missing something,” George muttered to himself. “Let’s go back to the images from when they entered the residential area.”

Jim sat forward and went back to the images of the yellow Tempo as it turned into the area.

“OK, I want to go through it frame by frame. Show me how to do it, and I’ll take over from here,” George told Jim.

Shrugging, Jim said, “Sure, no problem, but don’t be disappointed if you don’t find anything.”

Realizing that by doing this he was questioning Jim’s professional skill, George added, “I’m sure you did great, but you know what they say: ‘two pairs of eyes.’”

Getting up, Jim said, “Yeah, whatever. I’m going for a refill. You want one?”

George nodded distractedly. He was now singleminded in the scrutiny of each frame. After an hour, he took a break and called Leila. They had arrived in Srinagar and were heading toward the bungalow registered in the name of Soraya Khan.

“Any progress on your side?” Leila asked.

“No, I’m afraid not. Anyway, keep me posted. And, Leila, keep Mustafa with you at all times. He’s got your back. I don’t think I’ll have the resources to find you guys if you go missing, too.”

Leila laughed, assuring him that he had nothing to worry about.

George returned to the screen as an image of a laughing Carla appeared in his mind. His heart skipped a beat, and he reprimanded himself silently for this fleeting indulgence. He resumed the examination of the video.

After another ten minutes, George finally had a breakthrough. A white bed sheet, which was hanging on a line across the two buildings, blew off in a little crosswind. It fluttered down onto the yellow Tempo and was pulled off a few seconds later. It was then that George noticed a very similar van next to the one they had been tracking. The second van passed the other one and a few minutes later exited onto the road for the station. “I got it!” George shouted, and Jim ran back into the room.

“What?”

“We’ve been tracking the wrong Tempo. Look here.” He went back to the frame and showed Jim the image framing the second van. “The van Singh was in stopped for a few minutes, and this one drove out with the satellite tracking it. The other one would have carried on to its destination without satellite detection.”

“Geez, you’re good. Now I need to get general satellite footage of the whole area and see if we can find the other van.”

“Will there be coverage?”

“I hope so,” Jim said as he contacted the Air Force Satellite Control Network situated at the Consolidated Space Operations Center at the Vandenburg Air Force Base in California. He spoke to a few operators, giving them the coordinates, and waited. George paced up and down, checking on his field operatives constantly. He looked at his watch and saw that it was past one. Feeling hungry, he asked Jim if he’d like a sandwich. Jim was in conversation with an attractive female officer at the base via satellite, and he gave George the thumbs up. George made for the exit, but Jim called him back. “We found something.”

George rushed back to Jim’s side as images of Ghaziabad came on the screen. “We got this from the Indian air force. They’ve been watching Ghaziabad since 1995 when Kashmiri rebels, then known as Al-Faran, kidnapped six Western tourists in Jammu and kept them there in an abandoned warehouse,” Jim explained as he typed in the time line. When he zoomed in, the images became clear. Jim typed in the exact coordinates of where he and George had last positively identified their target. They saw the yellow Tempo heading to the station, and then less than three minutes later the other van drove out and followed a road to an industrial area. The buildings seemed abandoned.

The door opened, and a petite blond woman in her late thirties said, “George, the ambassador wants to see you now.”

George looked at her briefly and said, “Charlene, not now. Be a honey and tell Richard I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Now! He has that look in his eye.”

George ignored her and continued staring at the screen. Charlene sighed and said, “Fine, I’ll leave without you, but for your information, Dicky dear got a big fright when the Indian Minister of Defense called him a few minutes ago.”

George looked up, alarmed. “What?”

Smiling flirtatiously, she turned around and said, “Coming?”

Jim looked at George and said, “Oops, that was fast.”

“I don’t want the Indians involved right now. Shit. Jim, please continue with the surveillance, and when that van stops and Singh gets out with the suitcase, call me. Understand?”

“Sure. Chill, man, we’ll get them, OK?”

George breathed deeply and said, “I hope you’re right.”

With renewed effort, Carla was tugging to pull her hands free, but not making much progress. Elouise had by now calmed down and lay listlessly on the floor, staring into space.