Chapter 13 How the hell did she let my wife go?!
“How the hell did she let my wife go?!” Atharva thundered.
“Down, he is asleep,” Amaal whisper-screamed.
“I am telling you that Saba saw her that day and let her go without telling anybody and you are telling me to keep it down!”
“Atharva, he is on sleeping pills. I swear if you wake him…”
“I’m already awake.”
Atharva’s gaze flicked to his friend/ foe/ family’s saviour.
Samar was standing on the doorframe of his bedroom, rumpled with sleep but alert.
His compression clothes were absent, the loose shorts and nothing else on top, leaving his melted skin open to the elements.
Four months weren't long enough to start leaving his wounds open. Or were they?
“Sorry, go back to sleep,” Atharva cocked his head.
“Too late. What are you doing at 12 in my house? Screaming about Saba.”
“My Press Secretary happens to sleep on your couch and she needs to come with me.”
“Where?” Samar limped out, not caring that half his body was lined in scars.
“This does not concern you,” Amaal ordered him. “Go to sleep.”
Atharva stared at him because when did he ever listen?
“Where are you taking Amaal at 12 in the night?” Samar trudged into the hall of his flat and took a seat on one of the dining table chairs. The rented flat had been his home ever since he had moved out of the outhouse, and it looked exactly like his face. Unblemished.
“Secretariat.”
“Why?”
“Ok, you two can talk like I do not exist. I’m going to sleep. Feel free to leave when your party for two is over. Goodnight.”
Amaal began to reach for her pillow and shawl when Samar got to his feet — “Sit, Amaal.”
“You sit,” she snarled, looking just as worked up as he felt. Atharva sighed — “Sit. Both of you.”
Twin shocked eyes reared to him and he glared.
“Now.”
He did not think it would work but first Samar took his seat, then Amaal followed. On two ends of the hall. Atharva turned to Amaal — “Decide how you will do this but I want Saba first thing tomorrow morning. And when I’m done with her, she is out.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“The alternative is to keep her in my office, my secretariat, around my family knowing that she let Iram leave and never uttered a word? What were her intentions?”
“Not good, that I guarantee,” Amaal gave him a look. His mouth dropped open. “What do you mean?”
“You know very well what I mean.”
His eyes widened — “You can’t mean that!”
“It’s a possibility.”
Atharva scoffed, turning towards Samar who was quietly observing their exchange. They stared at each other.
“Iram told you this?” Samar asked.
“If you even imply that she is lying…”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I was just asking.”
Atharva relaxed. With the history there, every pointed question about Iram from his mouth fell like an accusation.
“What reason do you think she had, Amaal?” Samar went on, point-blank.
“It’s a bullshit reason. Maybe she is working for Sayyid Butt,” Atharva connected the dots. “How did I not think about this earlier…”
“She is not.” Amaal asserted.
“And how are you so sure?” He whirled.
“We run regular background checks plus deep dives on each of our staff members. You know it. You get the reports. After Iram, audits were run on each. It came clean.”
“So you say she did this out of some misplaced heartbreak?”
“Heartbreak?” Samar cut in. “At your hands?”
Atharva held his hands open at the absurdity. Can you imagine? Samar’s mouth quirked.
Fuck you, Atharva mouthed.
“Let me speak to her tomorrow,” Amaal cut their silent conversation short.
“I will speak to her,” Atharva commanded.
“No. Neither of you is equipped to deal with human resource issues. The last time you two ‘spoke’ to somebody she was ready to up and leave KDP.”
Samar burst out laughing.
“This is not funny.”
Samar wheezed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“This is insane. Some ex of yours let your wife run away and did not tell you.”
“My wife would have been home with my son that day had she said something!” Atharva thundered. Samar sobered.
Silence settled. Atharva shut his eyes. When had he started to lose temper like this?
He took a long, deep breath. He had always carried humour in his back pocket, dispelled tense situations with light jokes.
Samar had been the serious one. Atharva looked down at him now, presumably in excruciating pain with those raw pink skin grafts that looked like he had come out of some Matrix gas chamber.
His face had been spared but the scars did run up to the side of his neck.
“I have been under a lot of stress,” Atharva said. “I did not mean to come here like this and scream at you both.”
“What is happening with the Usama Aziz protests?” Samar inquired.
“That’s way down on my list of problems right now.”
“The blast in PoK?”
Atharva cut his eyes to Amaal.
“He was here with me when we got the news.”
“It is sealed, Atharva.” Samar’s voice was solemn.
“It better be,” he told the man he had trusted with his life once but couldn't trust as far as he could throw him now.
He owed Samar three lifetimes for jumping into the wired car meant for his pregnant wife and unborn twins but Atharva was still wary of him, his contacts in Awaami and his past track record.
“I know what it must have cost you to bring her back. I don’t know all the details. But I know enough, and I will take it to my grave. I give you my word.”
Suddenly exhausted, Atharva found the nearest chair and collapsed on it. Seeing the man that was once his friend, beta, unit surgeon, confidante, something inside him gurgled to the fore.
“The CM of Gilgit-Baltistan, Dilshad Khan. He was the senior Mir’s co-conspirator.”
“In the trafficking of kids?” Samar sat up.
Atharva nodded.
“When everything was lost and Sufiyaan died here, like a fool I went and threatened Sayyid Butt with his mother. To scoop information. To get something out of him to trace Iram’s parents.
But then Iram’s car got wired. I have a hunch…
more than a hunch, that Dilshad Khan ran the mission on Butt’s request. To finish any lingering evidence of their misdeeds. ”
“Didn’t he realise that Iram was there in his town for months?” Amaal pointed.
“No. That was my greatest challenge. To take her out of there from under his nose.”
“And did he figure it out?” Samar asked.
“He will, soon enough. These things can’t remain sealed for long. The airport was closed but there is ground staff, engineers, ATC. Somebody would slip up someday. And this man lives off exploiting information.”
“It’s a good thing then that she is never setting foot there ever again,” Samar nodded. “Have you tightened her security?”
“Shehzad is out. I have to get a replacement. For now she doesn’t leave the house, not without me, at least.”
“But she will, at some point.”
“We’ll see then.”
“How is she adapting?” Amaal stepped closer. “With Arth? And everything else?”
His personal life was nobody’s business. So Atharva smiled — “It’s work in progress. But he can wrap anybody around his finger.”
“Ada is coming tomorrow, isn’t she?”
“Hmm,” he pushed to his feet. “That reminds me, I have to tell Altaf about sending a car for her.”
“I will come tomorrow night to meet them all.”
He nodded. Amaal had volunteered to go pick Iram up from Kargil. Captain Husain would have sufficed but she had put her foot down. And he was glad for that. In the state he had found Iram in, he couldn’t imagine leaving her to herself in a car with nobody to talk to for hours at a stretch.
“I will be in the Secretariat by noon. Finish whatever you have with Saba before then. I will not wait another minute to talk to her.”
“Where are you going tomorrow first half?”
“Baramulla. For the broad gauge rail project inauguration.”
“Is it safe?”
“Let them come.”
“Atharva.”
“You think Altaf will let me go if it is not?”
“Yes,” she sighed. “Fine. Just keep your mouth shut about your PoK trip. We are trying to play it down, as if it was nothing. No big deal.”
“I know. You finish with Saba and then I will take over.”
“Ok, listen to me. Go home, go to sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, you will understand why I ask you not to do the talking.”
Atharva huffed, nodded at Samar — “How annoyed are you on a scale of 1 to 10 with the sensible talk?”
“7. I don’t listen to half the things.”
“Get out of my house and you get out of my hall.”
————————————————————
Atharva twisted the handle of Begumjaan’s room quietly and peeped in. They were sound asleep, both her and Yathaarth. He crept in quietly and began to slowly push the cot out.
“Huh!” Begumjaan startled awake.
“It’s me. I am taking him. Sorry, sleep.”
Her half-slits for eyes squinted further — “Atharva?”
“Yes?”
“Where is Iram?”
His heart thudded. He abandoned Yathaarth’s cot and ran — “I left her in our bedroom.”
Had she left?
He pushed his bedroom door open and it was empty. Atharva thudded back into Begumjaan’s room — “She is not there. Did you see her go?”
“Go? No,” she was rubbing her eyes, trying to sit up. “Why would she go?”
“You asked me where is Iram just now.”
“I asked because you brought Arth to me,” she yawned.
“She is not in our room,” he began to pull his phone out, working to dial Altaf when the tracker app caught his eye. He pressed it first. The pin blinked red. She was in the house. His breath stabilised.
But what if she had left her ring again?
“Atharva!”
“Huh?” He snapped out of his phone screen and glanced down at Begumjaan.
“Dilbaro, stop. What is happening to you?”
“Nothing. I need to find her. Her ring is in the house so she should be here somewhere…” he stepped outside her room, glancing from left to right. Did she go down to the kitchen? His office? But the lights were off downstairs. Atharva began to stride to his gramophone room and stopped. He turned.
Did she go to the attic?