The Agent Runner Read Free Page B

where he had expected to find them. He squinted at the floor with his eyes still smarting, but they were nowhere to be seen. He must have left them in the next room. Naked, he went out through the bedroom door into the unfinished space beyond.
    The house belonged to a Major who taught on the Technical Graduate Course at the nearby Kakul Military Academy. Similar in function to Sandhurst or WestPoint, the Academy provided training to officers for the Pakistan Army. The Major had been “encouraged” to find temporary accommodation elsewhere. The house was a new-build located in the Bilal Town suburb of Abbottabad: an ugly flat-roofed three-storey structure constructed of un-rendered cinderblocks that had been put up to replace a house destroyed in the 2005 earthquake.
    At the centre of the cement floor there was a tap stand and a bucket. He knelt down, wet his hands at the tap and rinsed his eyes. His head was splitting. When he looked up he felt three pairs of curious eyes watching him across the room, then a shudder of indiscriminate rage.
    The first set of eyes belonged to a Bandar monkey on a chain. The red-faced monkey had been there last night. It had spun on its chain and shrieked while he bent the boy over a chair. Now it bared its fangs.
    The second set of eyes belonged to an elderly bearded manservant who was squatting beside the camp chair where the deed took place. He was a classic Hazara, flat-nosed and Chinese-looking, with characteristic features inherited from thirteenth century Mogul invaders. The evidence of last night’s seduction, the bottle of scotch and the traces of white powder, had been cleared away and the trembling old man was holding up Noman’s pressed and folded shirt, jeans and underpants like an offering at a shrine. Balanced on top of them, like a crown on its cushion, was his gun, a Glock 17.
    The third set of eyes belonged to a professional watcher, a young intelligence officer with floppy hair and skinny jeans. His name was Omar and he was perched on a stool beneath a hide of camouflage netting with a 25-125 times magnification spotting scope on a tripod in front of him. By rights he should have been watching the neighbours and logging their movements in the army-issue ledger in meticulous longhand, but instead he was transfixed, startled by the sight of the legendary spy-catcher, ruthless interrogator, decorated hero of the Siachen glacier, and all-round very fucking scary piece of work Noman Butt kneeling buck-naked at the tap stand.
    Like the sleeping boy Tariq, Omar was a Close Observer. There should have been a surveillance team of at least six watchers in the house but the nature of the job, the absolute need for secrecy and the requirement to circumvent normal procedures meant there were only these two trendy
Banghra
boys from a privileged suburb of Lahore, who looked like they’d stepped out of a nightclub – Tariq and Omar – their ancient manservant and a bad-tempered monkey.
    Beyond the hide was a large window with a view, just visible through the diffuse and smoky air, of the crumpled ochre slopes of the Sarban Hills and the burning disk of the sun. It was a bright day throbbing with malevolent promise.
    Noman closed his eyes, gripping the bucket. Murderous fantasies assailed him of destroying them all, of stamping on the monkey and strangling the old man and of kicking the two boys until their organs burst, turning their supple youth to offal.
    Instead he should be praying, pressing his forehead to the rough cement in abasement, earning him the
zabiba
, the permanent thumb-shaped bruise of the truly devout, but it was a long time since he had prayed with conviction. He was ready to sacrifice for Islam, anything short of throwing himself into a cauldron of molten metal, but he struggled to live by it. He felt like death.
    ‘Shit, yaar,’ he muttered. He was still half-drunk.
    He took a deep breath, swallowed and held himself erect. First, a shower. He let go of the bucket,