The Agent Runner Read Online Free PDF Page A

finally consigned it to the wastepaper basket. Let them sort it out.
    He spread his hands palms-down on the desk. This is where I begin again, he told himself. I re-invent myself. I make my plan.
    In a moment he had another shot of vodka.
    Back to the in-tray. There was an approach from a
Lashkar-e-Taiba
affiliated group based in Free Kashmir who had devised a plan to demolish the turbines on the giant Bhakra Dam in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
    You had to give it to the Lashkar boys, they always thought big. They had already trained a cadre of fighters in night swimming, cliff climbing and explosives handling. They just needed help with moving the explosives into India on the Dubai-Bombay run. There was no way the Joint Chiefs would give the green light. They had already war-gamed it. Blowing the dam would likely lead to the collapse of the government in Delhi and might precipitate all-out war. Still, it was a plan worth developing and keeping in a drawer in preparation for an uncertain future. The speed with which the glaciers that fed the Indus were melting meant that Pakistan was likely to run out of water in the next twenty years. A hundred and eighty million people without a cup of water between them; that exceeded in scale even the most apocalyptic of Noman’s dreams. The only possible response to such a situation was to start blowing Indian dams. He wrote
More Info
in the margin.
    The phone rang.
    ‘Noman?’
    ‘The very same.’
    It was Major Tufail Hamid. He sounded pleased to hear him. Tufail was Chief of Staff to Khan. He was a lean, neat unobtrusive man with a fastidious nature and dark pouches beneath his eyes. Like Noman he had completed the arduous Special Service Group selection course before transferring to the ISI. Atone time he had been one of SS Directorate’s most valuable spies. In his final undercover operation his cover had been blown and he had been tortured for several days in a basement. Now he was the poacher-turned-gamekeeper, nurturing his own position as key-holder to Khan where he once nurtured networks of informants. He wore white gloves to disguise the damage wrought by acid.
    Tufail had served under Noman in Seventh Commando Battalion and it was Noman who got him his first job with the ISI and, after the acid attack, it was Noman who had recommended him to Khan when he was looking for an
aide-decamp
. Khan had tentacles that reached into every corner of Pakistan and beyond, and it was good to have a friendly set of eyes and ears in his immediate circle.
    ‘How is the old man?’ Noman asked.
    ‘Disappointed,’ Tufail replied in a brittle, chiding tone. Noman had been expecting the call ever since he took the decision, against Khan’s wishes, to visit the surveillance house in Abbottabad. ‘He wants to meet you for lunch. He’s booked a table at
Kinara
.’
    ‘I’ll be there,’ Noman said.
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Why don’t we have dinner tonight?’ Noman asked him suddenly. ‘Why don’t we go to the Cave and eat super nachos?’
    Noman loved the Flintstone’s fakery of the Cave restaurant with its honey-coloured plastic rock walls and glowing stalactites, its mock stone-age façade on the edge of a shopping mall.
    Tufail was silent for a moment.
    ‘How are you, Noman?’ he asked.
    ‘Not so good.’
    ‘Are you drinking?’ Tufail asked.
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘You bloody well better be there tonight.’
    ‘I’ll be there,’ he said. He meant it when he said it.

5. The House of War
    Arriving at Kinara on the south bank of Rawal Lake, Noman was shown to a table in a gazebo with a view across the water. He ordered a Pakola ice cream soda. He wished that he could have a beer, something to dull the edges of his headache. Khan came in fifteen minutes late to find him ordering a second Pakola.
    ‘Bring me tea,’ Khan told the waiter.
    Major-General Javid Aslam Khan considered his son-in-law. Seventy years old and lean as a compass needle, he had hard, unforgiving eyes behind thick