“This is the village jail,” he explains. “When you are finished with Imran, we will keep him here and put him on trial.”
Imran was arrested at the time of the arson attack—the international uproar meant that the police could hardly leave him untouched. But news cycles move on fast and forget even faster. With extremists’ money and weapons backing him, the police didn’t have the courage or inclination to press charges against Imran, and he was released within weeks. He returned to his big house here in the village and nothing changed. The villagers who lost their daughters swallowed their rage, fearing their sons might be next. But now, the fundamentalists have retreated north and Imran’s power base has crumbled. And so, Asif and the others are willing to take back their village and rebuild what was burned. Some justice for the loss of those young girls with big dreams of going to school; the girls whose hopes, and bodies, turned so quickly into dust and ash.
“We’ll deliver him as soon as we are done,” I assure Asif. “Thank you for your help so far.”
“There are three guards outside his house,” Asif tells us. “Once you get past them, the housekeeper will let you in the kitchen door.” Using his phone, he shows us a picture of the housekeeper so we don’t trust the wrong guy.
“Got it,” I confirm.
Asif points us on our way but Imran’s home is not hard to find—a sprawling, whitewashed house that squats heavily on a plot considerably larger than any of the others in the village. A forbidding wall at least twelve feet high and two feet thick forms a protective square around the dwelling.
I extract a small dart gun from the holster that clings to my body armor. We pace with light steps along the outside wall of the house. As we reach the front, I take over the lead position from Hala and sneak a look around the corner. Two men in white robes lean against the wall, smoking, looking more than a little bored of guarding the place. Concerned, I turn back to Hala and indicate that there are two guards there, not three, as Asif said—when the third man materializes like a specter, out of the darkness behind her. He advances on us, a crowbar raised high over his head. In a flash Hala ducks, giving me a clear shot. My dart fires into his neck and he falls like a stone before he can bring the weapon down. But the sound of his body and the crowbar crashing to the ground has alerted the other two. Their steps pound toward us, and I move out quickly from my cover behind the wall, and shoot again, twice. They both drop, drugged into unconsciousness that will last for a couple of hours at least.
Within moments, Hala is high above me, scaling the smooth surface of the wall as easily as if it were a staircase. Only once does she slip, but she rights herself, and makes the summit in seconds. She carefully slices away the curls of barbed wire that festoon the top, then drops a climbing line down to me. Quickly, silently, we use the line to make our way down the other side, into the heart of Imran’s home.
We find ourselves in a wide, open-air courtyard that clearly forms the entrance into the house, which lies ahead of us, looming darkly in the night. The word “courtyard” always feels kind of romantic to me—it makes me think of cool shadows, high pillars, maybe candles. That’s definitely not happening here. For a start, a stench of raw sewage wafts up from a blubbering drain to our left. And the only light source is a lurid fluorescent bulb dangling by a wire inside a wooden outhouse across from us. The scent of jasmine wafts past for a second, but it’s soon lost under the odor from the drain. Light glimmers in a room at the far end of the courtyard, sending a splash of white onto the rough concrete floor before us. Through those lit windows we can see the outline of cooking pots hanging from the ceiling and, against the wall, a wood-burning stove. Harsh bulbs give the white walls a greenish glow, and inside, a tiny old man moves about—the housekeeper. Through Asif, we’ve learned that there’s not much in the way of nine-to-five hours in Imran’s house—if you work for him you can rely on being on call twenty-four/seven, and he has a habit of staying up most of the night, plotting and planning with his cronies, and then sleeping through much of the day. What we’re expecting tonight is that Imran will indeed be awake, anticipating the attack that’s due to happen in less than forty minutes from now. And what we really want is for him to talk to one of his buddies about it, preferably in exquisite detail, giving the London team the details they need to alert the Indian police.
Hala taps lightly on the back entrance to the kitchen. The housekeeper startles, then scampers over to open the door with quick, neat movements. For a moment, he stares, stunned by the fact that we are women; then he gets over it. He looks at us questioningly, like he’s awaiting instructions. Hala turns to a platter of crisp pastry samosas sitting ready on the table and she sticks a clear, wafer-thin microphone dot onto the base of the plate. She shows the housekeeper, who nods, impressed that it’s invisible. Then he pulls us into a dark corridor and indicates that we should wait there. The passageway that we stand in leads directly into the living room, where we can now hear Imran and his comrades chatting. It’s good to be out of the coarse, bright light of the kitchen—I feel less visible out
