Dead Spy Running

50

Dhar watched the rickshaw driver’s legs seesaw through the Chandni Chowk traffic. ‘You will only have one chance,’ the woman next to him said. ‘At 5.35 p.m. the President will pause at the foot of the five flights of steps leading up to the Lotus Temple entrance. He will be greeted by a delegation of senior Bahá’ís. One will present him with a garland of flowers. At this point, and this point only, his security detail will withdraw a few steps. Your line of sight should be clear.’

‘I won’t miss,’ Dhar said. ‘Inshallah.’

They sat in silence, watching the sea of faces flow past them on either side. She had already been through all the practical arrangements for the evening and there was a sense that their meeting should now come to an end.

‘It must have been difficult, so much time-passing with the kafir,’ Dhar said. Across the street, two Western tourists, money belts slung below their thick waists, were taking photos of a man with no legs, perched on a board with wheels, pushing himself along with raw knuckles.

‘Those who work with animals get used to the smell.’

They were still wary of each other, both retreating to the muscled vernacular of the jihadi. There was no reason for either of them to trust each other beyond this short encounter. But there was something about the woman that intrigued Dhar. Her head was wrapped in a black scarf, concealing most of her face except for her big Meenakshi eyes. She spoke perfect Urdu, but with a slight accent that Dhar couldn’t quite place.

‘Some people are saying that the Americans were behind the jihad in Britain, the petty squabbles of the enemy doing our work for us.’

‘Is that what they say?’ she asked.

‘The talk is of nothing else. The American infidel recruited someone to destroy its allies from the inside.’

Dhar had a question for his passenger before he dropped her off at the town hall: the name of the insider in London. His father, whom he had met only once, was dead, but he still needed to know, for himself, for his brother.

‘The enemy within has succeeded,’ she said. ‘The Britishers are facing turmoil.’

‘Inshallah.’ The rickshaw speeded up, free of traffic now. ‘Your work is at the infidel’s embassy. You must know who this person is in Britain.’

‘Why do you ask?’

Because his jihadi world, so recently turned upside down, would begin to make sense again if he could be certain that it was an American who had betrayed his father. But he said nothing.

‘The infidels believe it was one of their own,’ she continued, ‘but the credit lies elsewhere. Not with Britain or America, but with someone, a woman, who tricked them both.’

‘Another woman?’ Dhar shifted in his seat. ‘It would be an honour to meet her,’ he said quietly, without conviction.

‘An honour?’ she asked. ‘What’s honour got to do with it?’

‘It can’t have been easy. Like you, she was living amongst the infidel, but acting in the name of Allah.’

‘Was she?’

But even Dhar wasn’t sure any more.