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Terror in Islamabad – Based on True Events | EXTRACT

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19.11.2020

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A cultural attache at the Indian Embassy in Pakistan, Veer Singh becomes Amit Munshi to go undercover on a top-secret mission – with his life, and many others’, at stake. All for the nation. And the truth. How long can a lone man survive when confronted with a formidable enemy on its own turf?

Based on true events, Terror in Islamabad is a gripping thriller that will have readers turning every page breathlessly till they reach the end. Read this extract:

July 1994

Thursday

It was Amit Munshi’s last working day at the Indian embassy in Islamabad.

He woke up at 4 a.m., an hour earlier than he typically did. Feeling groggy, he struggled to leave the bed for a while before finally rising and going to the window to draw back the curtains. Last night, he had returned home at 1.30 a.m. after attending his farewell dinner, and by the time he had hit the bed, it was 2.50 a.m. Steadying himself, he gently pressed his face against the glass to look outside. It was still dark. He opened the window, inviting the morning breeze to rush in from the garden and caress his face. He stood there for some time, soaking in the fresh and cool air to overcome his sluggishness. Muezzins from the mosques in the neighbourhood were yet to begin reciting the azaan, the call to prayer, reminding believers that it was time to worship.

Moving away from the window, Amit wrestled briefly with the idea of sleeping for an hour more but finally dropped it. Scores of farewell meetings had been lined up in the morning hours with friends and colleagues who had helped him in his job as cultural attaché. The afternoon had been kept free to update the profiles of four new sources whom he had brought on the regular payroll only last month. He also had to finalize a note on the operations he had been running for the last three and a half years, which would help guide his successor on handling them smoothly. The next two days—Friday and Saturday—were holidays, and on Sunday at 2 p.m. he was scheduled to leave Pakistan for good at the end of an extremely stressful but highly productive and professionally rewarding tour of duty.

Amit Munshi figured in the Indian embassy’s diplomatic list as cultural attaché, but that was his cover job. He was actually an officer of India’s external intelligence agency and his real name was Veer Singh. Living a duplicitous life, he had been functioning in Pakistan overtly as an officer from the Ministry of Culture on deputation to the Ministry of External Affairs and covertly as an intelligence operative under an assumed name. The stress of carrying Amit Munshi’s guise proved at times unbearable, but he had managed to carry it flawlessly. In fact, within two months of his arrival in Islamabad, he began enjoying his interactions with artists from both India and Pakistan as well as his meetings with sources. He found it fun, playing hide-and-seek with watchers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau and the Islamabad Capital Territory Police.

Amit, however, had one regret. He had had to leave his wife Bhama and his kids in Delhi. There were times when he desperately longed for their company, especially when the pressure of work hemmed him in from all sides and he returned to his huge bungalow after a long day at the office, tired and forlorn. He also missed Bhama being at his side when he had to make social calls on prospective sources. But it did not take him long to realize that he had made a wise decision by not bringing her and the children to Islamabad, subjecting them to the hostility and the aggressive restrictions of the counter-intelligence bullies on their movements. From day one, the counter-intelligence team had severely curtailed his liberty. He could neither leave the embassy unescorted by the surveillance team nor move around freely in the neighbourhood markets. Visiting shops to buy groceries was an unfailing pain, with watchers literally breathing down his neck, pushing and shoving him and elbowing him deliberately whenever he bent to pick up an item from a vendor or stopped to bargain with a shopkeeper. However, the static surveillance post that was stationed permanently in front of his house was a pleasant exception. Altaf, Akmal and Jehangir, who manned the post, never harassed him.

What kept Amit going despite the annoying surveillance was the appreciation he received regularly from Ambassador Vinay Suri and the Agency’s officers at the Delhi headquarters for his work. Moreover, his assignment was only for two years. By the time he finished even identifying potential Pakistanis for subversion, his tenure would end and he would be back with his wife, kids, friends and colleagues in Delhi, to be known once again as Veer Singh.

Now fully awake, Amit went to the kitchen to make tea. He opened the window facing the front gate and noticed, in the diffused glow of the street light that was continuously blinking, a car and a jeep belonging to the surveillance unit. They were parked outside his sprawling bungalow in Sector F-7, with their lights switched off. Since none of the street lights barring one had been working for the past twenty days, there was not enough light for him to make out whether Altaf, Akmal and Jehangir had left their post and were keeping their nightly vigil over the house from the vehicles or they had been replaced by a new set of watchers, who were perhaps more alert, unfriendly and aggressive. He wanted to find out because a contact in the Capital Territory Police had hinted last week that Amit could be subjected to more intense surveillance to confirm the ISI’s suspicion that he was an officer of the Agency. The source had further claimed that following the detention and interrogation of an ISI employee of the Pakistan high commission by the Intelligence Bureau in Delhi, ISI and other counter-intelligence units had been instructed to step up their efforts to identify all Agency officers posted in the Indian embassy.

However, Amit had not observed any reinforcement of the surveillance around him until spotting the car and jeep this morning. Usually, a patrol car would come by every two or three hours and park briefly in front of his house during the night. Then, a few persons would come out of the car to chit-chat with Altaf and his friends before leaving. Of late, even these visits had been discontinued.

It was now 4.15 a.m. Amit prepared his tea, brought a chair from the dining area and sat down. Once he finished drinking his tea, he went to get ready. He took a shower, wrapped a saffron-coloured dhoti around his waist and covered his upper body with a white linen shawl. At 4.45 a.m., he entered the prayer room.

Amit began his prayers by performing the preparatory rituals that led him step by step into a trance. Once he reached that state of mind, his self was immersed in a celestial world, disconnected from what was happening around him. In a voice that was audible only to him, he began invoking the goddess Shakti to appear so that he could thank her for taking care of him during his difficult time in Pakistan, but she did not materialize. All he could make out were fuzzy, shapeless forms drifting around in misty space. And when he persisted in identifying her, even those shadows disappeared. After struggling vainly for some time to connect with her, he gave up.

Amit believed the deity’s absence was ominous. Maybe she did not appreciate his reducing his prayers to an exercise for thanksgiving. Maybe he was unable to drive his concentration to a point where he could realize her presence. Maybe his subconscious was prompting him to go early to the office to complete the day’s engagements and not leave anything pending for Friday and Saturday, when he would be busy attending farewell parties. Being a practising tantric, a discipline he had learnt from a Buddhist lama in Arunachal Pradesh during his adolescence, he often engaged with the goddess Shakti to discuss the problems of those whom he wanted to help and sought her direction on how to alleviate their suffering. She had never disappointed him and had always been accurate in her counselling. But today she remained inexplicably distant and preferred not to engage with him.

Reluctantly, Amit wound up his prayers, changed into his office attire and went to the dining room. Usman, his cook, had laid out his frugal breakfast of bread with honey, fruits and yoghurt. Amit quickly finished eating and went to the foyer, where he waited for a few minutes for Fatima, the maid, while glancing through the headlines of Dawn and Daily Jasarat, but she was nowhere to be seen.

‘Please tell Fatima to clear up all these cartons. The packers have left them lying all over the place,’ Amit instructed Usman in disgust.

‘Jenab, I don’t know if she will come today. You should not have paid her this month’s salary in advance,’ Usman said.

‘She needed the money for moving to another house. I couldn’t say no,’ Amit said. ‘Can you hire someone for three days? I don’t want to leave the house in a mess.’

‘I will surely try,’ Usman assured him. ‘But, jenab, there is something I have always wanted to tell you about her,’ he continued.

Amit remained silent. Usman had never liked Fatima, who kept the house very clean but was never on time nor would she help Usman by cutting vegetables or cleaning utensils.

‘Jenab, for the last couple of months I have been observing her talk to the policemen who keep watch on the house. Whenever I confronted her, she would say that they were asking for water or wanted to go around the garden to pluck flowers. God knows what she does after I leave the house. I don’t trust her at all.’

Usman sounded genuinely concerned.

Amit was not worried. It no longer mattered what Fatima could have told the ISI. He rarely interacted with her, and it was unlikely that she knew anything about his intelligence background or even his cultural work. He walked out of the house and as was his habit, began strolling in the garden, which he had tended with great care for the last three and a half years. It was a hobby he had picked up early in life and it came in handy in surviving the stress of operational work and coping with the frequent bouts of loneliness he suffered in the absence of his wife and children. To his dismay, most of the plants – including the poinsettia and balsam – had withered, the sunflowers and marigolds looked sunburnt and the magnolias and hibiscus had turned pale. The rose beds, where he grew roses of different hues, were parched for want of timely watering and manuring. The greenery of the lawn that he took enormous pride in had faded. Sadly, he had not been able to spare any time to take care of the plants because of his preoccupation with meetings with his sources during the past nine weeks. Also, the gardener Karim had suddenly stopped coming about twenty days ago. Amit had tried to contact him a few times, but his phone had been dead. He had sent Usman twice to check on Karim’s welfare, but his house was locked, and his neighbours had no idea where he had gone. Since Amit was leaving shortly, it did not make sense to hire a new gardener. Besides, there was no guarantee that his successor would have the same love for flowers and foliage that he had.

To read more, order your copy of Terror in Islamabad today!

TERROR IN ISLAMABAD
About the Book - TERROR IN ISLAMABAD

A cultural attache at the Indian Embassy in Pakistan, Veer Singh goes undercover on a top-secret mission - with his life, and many others', at stake. All for the nation. And the truth. As an agent of India's External Intelligence…

About the Author - Amar Bhushan

Amar Bhushan briefly served in the BSF intelligence, State Special Branch and Intelligence Bureau and ended up with working in the Research and Analysis Wing for the next twenty-four years. The Zero-Cost Mission/The Wily Agent, was published in 2018 as…

To read more, order your copy of TERROR IN ISLAMABAD, by Amar Bhushan today!

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