Mohammed Hanif - A Case of Exploding Mangoes

“Arnie, why don’t you bring her over?” When General Zia called him Arnie, he always wanted Arnold Raphel to do something beyond the call of his diplomatic duty.

“Sure, Mr President. No true diplomat should ever eat at home. Just waiting for your invitation.”

“I know that these things should be arranged in advance, but we are having another American friend over for dinner and he would like to see you very much.”

Arnie looked at his Hawaiian steaks and panicked. Not another brainstorming session with a visiting delegation of the Pakistani Association of North American Doctors, Arnie thought. Not another wasted evening discussing models for some proposed mosque in some godforsaken New Jersey neighbourhood. Not another debate about how a minaret can be adapted so that it reflects true Islamic architectural sensibility without clashing with American aesthetic values. He was wondering how to make it clear to the General that his brief as the ambassador didn’t include being used as a guinea pig for spreading Islam in North America. He was thinking about a diplomatic enough excuse, something about Nancy having a stomach bug or entertaining a group of local newspaper editors; both useless, he knew. His domestic staff had probably already reported to the General that Ambassador Sahib was planning a honeymoon at home, and the General himself would definitely know who was entertaining local editors and where.

Before Arnie could come up with something, General put an end to his dreams of a cosy domestic evening. “Bill is coming over for dinner,” he said.

“Bill Casey?” Arnie asked, feeling very unlike the Ambassador of the United States. He wondered whether his friends in Langley were planning to put the boot in after entrusting him with the biggest assignment since Saigon. “The only difference is you’ll be managing victory rather than a defeat,” Bill had told him. The embassy was full of Bill’s people anyway, from the trio of cultural, commercial and military attaches to the political officers and the communication analysts. Sometimes Arnold wondered whether his cook was also getting his recipes from Langley. He realised the need for this, as Bill always kept reminding him that the CIA was running the biggest covert operation against the Soviets from Pakistan since their last biggest covert operation against the Soviets from somewhere else. Bill kept reminding everyone that he had the Russkis by their balls in Afghanistan. Bill was always telling his old chum Ronald Reagan that it was the Wild West all over again, that the Afghans were cowboys with turbans and that they were kicking Soviet ass as it had never been kicked before.

But Arnie was the ambassador around here and he shouldn’t have to find out about Bill’s imminent visit from General Zia. The Director of the CIA could visit wherever he wanted and whomever he wanted, but even the Director of the CIA had to inform the ambassador who was, technically, his host. But what can you do about Bill, or as Nancy always called him, Bill get-Ronnie-on-the-line Casey?

General Zia laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s just an informal visit. When Bill gets together with Prince Naif they do crazy things, you know. They called from Jeddah an hour ago and said they felt like eating that bitter-gourd, mutton-curry combination that the First Lady made last time they were here. And I said, ‘My wife is your sister and you know sisters love to feed their brothers.’”

“I’ll receive him and bring him over,” Arnie said. He had no idea where and when Bill was arriving.

“Don’t worry,” General Zia said. “They were racing their planes from Saudi to here. The Prince won and is already here. General Akhtar is picking Bill up. His plane should be landing now. You come over and if Nancy likes bitter gourds, bring her along as well.”

The Chief of Inter Services Intelligence, General Akhtar Abdur Rehman’s devotion to his duty was not the ordinary devotion of an ambitious man to his work. General Akhtar approached his work like a poet contemplating an epic in progress; conjuring up battles in his imagination, inventing and discarding subplots, balancing rhyme and reason. His work could take him in a single day from an interrogation centre to a state banquet to an unlit tarmac runway at an airport, where he would receive a guest whose arrival time he never knew. Pakistan’s second most powerful man didn’t mind waiting in the dark if the visitor happened to be the second most powerful man in United States of America.

The next time General Akhtar stood on an airfield, he would be in a uniform, he would not want to board the plane but would be forced to do so, out of sheer reverence for his chief. And that would be the last order he would ever obey.

General Akhtar looked into the orange-tinged Islamabad sky and wondered what was taking his guest so long.

Bill Casey’s C141 Star Lifter, carrying him from Saudi Arabia, circled over the military airbase outside Islamabad. The clearance for landing had been given, but Bill was still freshening up after a two-hour nap. The interior of this plane was part hotel room, part communication bunker; a flying command centre carrying so much black metal with blinking lights that a team of three sergeants worked full time monitoring and decoding the incoming and outgoing messages. There were modular frequency jammers to override all other transmitters working in a ten-mile radius, digital deflectors to misguide any missiles lobbed at the jet, double jammers to counter-jam any other jamming equipment operating in the area. It could also fly under five different identities, switching from one call sign to another as it crossed continents. It was Duke One when it took off from Saudi Arabia. Somewhere over the Arabian Sea, it had become Texan Two.

Bill’s suite on the plane was a basic budget-hotel affair, a double bed, a shower and a small television. He shaved and repacked his bag to while away some time so that Prince Naif could win the race. Five years of dealing with his Saudi counterpart had taught Bill one lesson: you can take a Bedouin out of a desert, you can take him off his camel and give him the most expensive flying machine in the world, but there was no point trying to take the camel jockey out of him. If the Prince wanted to race his plane on his way to dinner, the CIA chief would oblige.

As Bill’s C141 made its final approach to the runway and the pilot started communication with air traffic control, the counter-jammers went to work. Thousands of listeners tuning into Golden Oldies from Ceylon Radio heard their favourite songs interrupted by a chorus of bagpipes issuing from the cover pulse generators on the plane. The arrival was so secret that even the air traffic controller, used to the arrival of American military planes at odd hours, didn’t know that he was communicating with a VIP flight. Giving respectful instructions to the pilot, he thought, Here comes another plane full of booze and pig-meat for those American spies at the US Embassy.

The plane taxied to the furthest end of the runway and the runway lights were switched on only when it had come to a complete halt. Six identical black Mercedes limousines were parked close to the runway. Four motorcycle outriders — or pilots as they are called in the VIP Security Unit — waited on their Kawasaki 1000 motorcycles in front of the convoy, their helmet earphones on standby for instructions. General Akhtar Abdur Rehman saluted Bill Casey, a salute complete with stamping of the heel and his straight palm parallel with his right eyebrow.

“Welcome, Field Marshal,” he said. The tableau had started as a joke when Bill, in his first meeting with Akhtar, kept calling him Generalissimo. “Well, if I am a general, you must be the field marshal, sir,” Akhtar had said and now he insisted on the role play whenever Bill visited.