The Kashmir Trap (8 page)

The policeman paused for a moment before continuing, “Did you know the Volvo exploded near Yamuna Pushta, a Muslim slum?”

Max persisted. “What was David meeting him about?”

That Jaikumar could not say. There was no way to interrogate Khankashi, because the imam had disappeared the day after his meeting with David, the day of the explosion itself. He was suspected of hiding out in Kashmir or elsewhere on the Pakistani side.

“Why?”

Jaikumar shook his head. The massacre of Hindus in Jammu, maybe, plus the killing of Ghani Lone. Khankashi was suspected of contracting it out or at least being involved in some way. Every time there'd been a flare-up of violence in recent months, fingers had been pointed at Indian Muslims. Being a Muslim in India was not good, not good at all. The slightest skirmish or lawlessness rained public hatred down on them. They were the whipping boys, the scapegoats. They'd always been suspect in this country. Were they even “real Indians”? They probably had some secret agenda in collusion with worldwide Islam, for instance. If they had to choose between India and Al-Qaeda, which would it be? The events of these past weeks spoke for themselves, didn't they? Then again, maybe Genghis Khan was wary of meeting the same fate as the Kashmiri leader. What if he wasn't responsible for the killing? What if he'd just taken off? That was the hypothesis of the investigators.

Genghis Khan
, thought Max,
our first real lead
.

 

 

T
he
citizens of Delhi might not be taking the threat of war seriously, but the authorities had both thumbs on the panic button. In order to protect the Canadian High Commission, the minister of home affairs had pulled out all the stops. Heavy-set and heavily armed troopers in khaki lent support to the regular security agents, casting the same wary eye over visitors at the entry point. So, this was it. Canada was now officially a member of the
victims-of
-terrorism club. As Max got out, the taxi made a U-turn on Shantipath and headed for the “normalcy” of downtown. Here the scope of the upheaval struck him. More of the same frenzy in the waiting room, though with less noise and fewer raised voices. Under the Canadian flag, Indians in ties and wearing perfume, with slicked-back hair, were waiting for visas or work permits. Obviously, recent events had put them in even more of a hurry to get out of here ASAP. Max went up to the counter where a young bilingual woman (“in the two official languages” according to the small blue panel on her left) accepted Mr. Brokowich's passport — provided by Antoine — as he asked to see Raymond Bernatchez.

“Unfortunately, the high commissioner is —”

“— I have an appointment,” Max cut in. “He's expecting me.”

Patterson had done things right: a couple of
hmm
s and
yeah
s on the phone and an electronic click came from the door on the right. Under the envious gaze of the mere mortals in the waiting room, Max disappeared into the office complex.

“My name's Sunil Mukherjee, secretary to Mr. Bernatchez.” He held out his hand. He was young with grey hair, probably in his forties. His large glasses gave him a serious, professorial look. Max followed him down a corridor of photos showing winterscapes, no doubt to help visitors cool off, then up some stairs. Mukherjee walked fast, never looking around. On the second floor was a half-open door and a desk covered with papers and a bouquet of flowers — no doubt David's office. Max felt like going in and sitting down as he had in Philippe's embassy office in San Salvador under similar circumstances. Mukherjee was waiting up ahead before another half-open door. That was Bernatchez's office.

When Max went in, the high commissioner was on the phone with his broad back to the visitor. This man, Juliette had primed him, used to be a pro football player, though flabby now from lack of training. The chair swivelled round and Bernatchez waved Max to a seat, then went back to his previous position. Faced with a wall of back once more, Max discreetly surveyed the usual run of family photos: three offspring in graduation robes, smiling and full of the joy of life (“Thanks, Dad.”) and a more recent one taken in India, probably his wife, with Indian children in her arms.

“Sorry for the mess, Mr. Brokowich,” Bernatchez got up with his hand outstretched for Max to shake. “Dennis tells me you felt it was essential for us to meet.”

Now Max's cover had to be flawless. After supposedly talking to David in Kathmandu on the phone, Brokowich had decided, after weeks of hesitation, to go over the heads of his board (“such nervous Nellies … you have no idea”) and take part in the Montreal conference anyway. Patterson was terrific and a great help, but he was worried after what happened to his contact, David (“How horrible … awfully sad”), and now this impending war as well. So, on his way from Singapore to Montreal, he had decided to stop over in Delhi to check on things.

After meeting with Juliette, then Patterson, Max realized that several businessmen had threatened to pull out in light of recent events. Though Patterson was the guest speaker, he'd advised his clients to put their investment plans on hold: “just till things settled down.” If this had been happening across the board, Bernatchez's phone must have been ringing off the hook for a week.

Bernatchez replied accordingly, “There's really nothing to be worried about, I assure you.”

“You are pulling out, though.”

“Absolutely not. Just the families and non-essential employees. I'm staying, and so are my principal collaborators.”

Max couldn't prevent a hint of a smile. “Easy when one's well protected.”

“Look, Mr. Brokowich, things aren't nearly as bad as you seem to think.”

“Oh, it's not just me, it's also
The Times
,
France-Soir
, the
Washington Post
…”

“The Indians and Pakistanis have been having these squabbles for fifty-five years now.”

“I feel a bit better.”

“Believe me, there won't be a war.”

“Still, a Canadian and his chauffeur were killed.”

“Oh, David didn't die, and there's no proof it was linked to Kashmir, either. We mustn't confuse two separate issues.” Bernatchez was getting impatient, no doubt wishing he hadn't agreed so readily to Patterson's request that he meet this jumpy businessman. Normally, he'd leave this to some underling or Indian secretary, but it was too late now, and a mistake he wouldn't make again. “Since 9/11, the rules have changed, and our old standbys don't work anymore, but despite appearances, including what happened to David, I don't believe Canada's presence in India is …” he groped for words “… let's say
exacerbated
, for either party. On the contrary, you'd be ill-advised to reconsider your intentions.”

Max sighed and pretended to be won over. Bernatchez smiled, sensing victory already, and was in a hurry to get rid of this guy.

“There are a few details to settle, of course, and David will no longer be in charge, only for the time being, I hope.” The high commissioner heaved himself out of his chair and looked to the right of the doorway to a smaller office. “Vandana. Where is she? Oh, dammit, that's right. William, come in here.”

Moments later, a nervous, frail man appeared in a well-cut suit, quite unlike the one Bernatchez was wearing.

“Vandana's taken over David's files,” the commissioner explained, “She'll be in charge of communications with Montreal and all that, but she's out at the moment. Allow me to introduce William Sandmill, our first secretary. He'll be organizing Montreal too.”

As soon as the underling arrived, Bernatchez made his getaway, leaving Sandmill to politely throw this bum out, his “old friend” Patterson notwithstanding.

“The Spanish Embassy,” Sandmill explained, “has decided to organize a reception in solidarity with us to defy the terrorists, as they put it, to show that we diplomats are not to be intimidated. Vandana's there now, getting things ready.” He glanced at his Bulova. “Come and wait in my office. We'll be more comfortable there.”

He guided Max down the hall and the stairway, bypassing the photocopy and vending machines with a smoothness his boss would probably envy, explaining on the way that the whole subcontinent was in upheaval — that was undeniable — but there was also a good side to all this. A large coming together of ideas, cultures, and religions was underway, the mixture bubbling and overflowing from the pot sometimes, but progress, finally, after centuries of stagnation. The West had a role to play in this renaissance.

Max barely listened to his spiel, as Sandmill led him into the huge, sun-filled office he shared with an Indian colleague.

“This is Mahesh Tevari.”

They shook hands. The young man was timid and self-effacing.

“Mahesh is in charge of our relations with the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry and of our local delegation. In Calcutta, the consulate deals with it. The same thing in Bombay.”

“Mumbai,” corrected Tevari.

“Bombay, Mumbai, I never can keep them straight. They've changed all the names, and it's so confusing.” Sandmill turned to Max: “Would you like something to drink, Mr. … uh …”

“Brokowich.”

The first secretary was well informed and knew India like the back of his hand, insofar as such a thing could ever be. He was selling Bernatchez's soap with conviction, reinforced occasionally by Tevari, who grunted or nodded his agreement. Max wanted nothing more than to believe them both. Then an older man showed up in the doorway, looking for Vandana as well, the veteran Caldwell. Mukherjee appeared once more with a glass of tea for each of them.

“Have we answered all your questions, Mr. Brokowich? Are you more at ease now?”

Max nodded. Just then, the sound of voices came from the corridor, and Langevin, head of public relations, came in, his jacket slung over one shoulder. He was talking on the phone in Spanish with his colleague at their embassy, talking about the reception and solidarity cocktails. He turned down the tea that Bernatchez's secretary offered him.

Watching this, Max tried to imagine David functioning in such a universe and couldn't manage it. Maybe he didn't know his nephew well enough, or possibly he'd known him mostly through others: Béatrice, Patterson, and now Juliette. A huge sadness suddenly crept over him.

David's name kept coming up in conversation. Max looked up and asked the 100,000 rupee question: “Who do you suppose carried it out? Who did it? Why?”

Sandmill and Tevari exchanged glances. They couldn't open up to just any stranger without consequences. The whole commission was walking on eggshells.

“I don't know,” said Tevari, “but nothing's the same since …” Perturbed, he looked away.

“David isn't just a colleague,” said Sandmill, “he's a friend to all of us.”

“I can guarantee you one thing, Mr. Brokowich,” ventured Tevari, “Indians are as sad for this as you are.”

Touched, Max acquiesced.

“Vandana, everyone's been looking for you!”

It was Caldwell from the other end of the corridor. When the young woman approached Sandmill and Tevari's office, the former signalled her in. Vandana was pretty, with very long hair held by a golden comb, and magnificent, very determined eyes. “A great girl,” Juliette had said.

 

W
ithin
the four office walls, however, Vandana Dasgoswami didn't seem so sure of herself, more like a startled young girl as she cast a nervous eye on Max. No point putting up a front with her. No need for a cover like with Bernatchez. Her friend Juliette had communicated directly with her from Montreal and explained who Max was, that he'd soon be in Delhi under an assumed name (“It's complicated. Don't ask.”), and would need her help. Vandana was clearly afraid and needed reassuring, warming up in a sense, as soon as possible. She was indispensable to him.

“The flowers were from you?”

“Excuse me?”

“On David's desk.”

She seemed even more ill at ease, sad and stressed too. Max mentioned David's visit to Genghis Khan the day before the bombing, which she didn't know about, but his relationship with Imam Khankashi was public knowledge. They met regularly after his stay in Tihar.

“Tihar?”

“The biggest penitentiary in India,” she explained. “Ten thousand prisoners. The imam was held for a year without trial and in dreadful conditions, as you can well imagine. He was suspected of every crime you can think of, naturally. Technically, David didn't work in the consular service, but he managed to find a lawyer and get him a fair trial.”

It finally clicked for Max. The imam had Canadian citizenship. “Eight years in Downsview, Ontario, before coming back after the Ayodhya Massacre.”

She was going too fast for him, so Max asked her to begin again, slowly, beginner-style. Vandana explained that India was a layering of civilizations, one on top of the other, with mixed results, but in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, the stratification had solidified. In the fifteenth century, a mosque had been built at the legendary birthplace of the god Rama. Sure, it was wrong, but history was history. It was either move on or be constantly at war. The Hindus, however, were not about to let things go, and Ayodhya became the symbol of a cause and a rallying-cry.

“Then, in December 1992, all hell broke loose. A bunch of Hindu crazies took apart the Babri Mosque stone by stone. But that wasn't enough for them. Next, they emerged from the dust cloud that remained and headed into town, pillaging and massacring to their hearts' delight. Sectarian violence then spread all across the country.

“The Islamic
Hizb-ul
-Mujahideen was bent on vengeance,” Vandana continued, “and attacks occurred all over, especially in Kashmir. Back in Canada, Genghis Khan didn't miss an opportunity to spew his hatred of Hindu nationalists. He was the perfect target, the ideal bad guy, and easy to scoop up.

“He was in prison on and off. The last time was in the fall of 2001. Alone, isolated, and helpless, he had no illusions about Indian justice, least of all the hope for a trial. He was bound to lose anyway, and he was already paying through the nose to the RSS guards.”

“RSS?”

“Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an association of national Hindi volunteers, extremists — fascists, in fact. They are paramilitary and have existed since 1925 — one of them killed Mahatma Gandhi. They're fanatics who get off on trashing Muslims whenever they can, and aren't ashamed to look up to the way Hitler tried to solve ‘the Jewish question' in Europe.

“With thirty million militants, they've supported the Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Vajpayee, were in on the founding of it, in fact, and the government appreciates their support big-time,” Vandana said. “Benign neglect and willful blindness, complicity, as a matter of fact, and all it wants from the BJP it gets. The RSS spreads terror with impunity wherever it goes. The Ayodhya Massacre couldn't have happened without the connivance of local authorities.

“Once Genghis Khan was free, the RSS pressure never let up. The one in charge of neutralizing him was Sri Bhargava. He's the most violent member of the RSS, and he has no political ambitions,” she said. “His sole objective is simply to kill all Indian Muslims, or at least throw them out of the country, starting with Genghis Khan.

“In Hindu mythology, Durga is a merciless goddess on the warpath against ignorance; hence Bhargava's name for his outfit, Durgas, even more radical then RSS. And this
gougat
won people over. Hindus saw him as the answer to Islamic terrorists, a kind of James Bond of ‘Hinduness.'

“As a result, all over the country, Bhargava and his Durgas took control of the terrorism. They used Islamist methods — bombs, martyrdom, et cetera, without ignoring the old methods, such as boycotts of Muslim shops, demolition of mosques, or pogroms in Muslim neighbourhoods. They even opened dozens of specialized schools —
shakhas
— focused on anti-Islamic doctrine, which followed the lead of
madrassas
, Qur'anic schools that sowed the seeds of radical Islam across Pakistan and elsewhere: similar methods, indoctrination, even misinformation.”

“Genghis Khan versus Agent 007; extremists in a struggle to the finish … would this Bhargava go so far as to kill a foreign diplomat?” Max had gradually been building toward a theory. “If David was buddy-buddy with Imam Khankashi,” he continued, “James Bond might have found out and wanted to teach him a lesson. See what I mean? Maybe not just him, but also the other Western diplomats who might be tempted to side with the bearded boys.”

Vandana recoiled slightly. She was sick about this whole thing, and it showed. Despite a very professional effort at masking it, she felt terrorized, too. Her position at the High Commission and her Western clothes made one forget she was Indian, that she lived here. She had a husband, family, perhaps children, all perfect prey for extremists. Max had read somewhere the story of a Hindu grandmother disfigured by acid simply for offering a glass of water to a Muslim labourer. Acid in the face was also the reward bestowed by an enraged Islamist on a young girl for wearing jeans on a bus in Srinagar.

“What files was David working on the last few days, apart from visiting the imam?”

Vandana sighed. She'd already been asked this a dozen times by Josh Walkins of the RCMP and his Indian colleagues. “Active and current files, I forget which,” she responded wearily. “He was preparing to leave for Montreal … the conference.”

“Lots of meetings with colleagues, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Did he make any phone calls, receive any visits?”

“Phone calls, but no appointments that I remember. I took care of it at Mr. Caldwell's request. The few days in Delhi before his departure weren't enough to finish up the Kathmandu files along with the run-up to Montreal.”

Kathmandu again.

This trip had been playing on Max's mind. He put himself in David's place — having to go home in the middle of the night after preparing the Montreal conference. Endless meetings with Bernatchez, Caldwell, and company. There were a thousand details to attend to and time was running short. The investors had to be reassured, fussed over, and given tender loving care; a huge job. Still, David had to go to Kathmandu in the shadow of the mountains … with Vandana along, too. Two fewer pairs of hands to do Bernatchez's bidding.

That didn't take into account Béatrice's impromptu visit. David hadn't seen his mother for months, and yet he chose that very moment to leave town.

Odd.

“Kathmandu — what exactly happened there? What did you do?”

“Meetings and get-togethers.”

“What about?”

“A literacy project we've been on for months with CIDA, the Canadian International Development Agency.”

“Even during a civil war?”

“The situation's calmed down a bit,” she replied unconvincingly.

Max sensed she was hiding something, but what was it? He'd felt it from the beginning. A professional liar himself, he knew how to spot an amateur who'd never make it to his level of the game. The ones with no talent for it, like Vandana, didn't have the skills for his kind of work.

“You're right,” she said, changing the subject, “I left the flowers.”