Page 57 of Into the Gray Zone

Knuckles said, “Who’s paying for that?”

“It’s courtesy of the Thakkars. Trust me, this is all going to be first class.”

Sure enough, they went out into the street and a man in a suit advanced, saying something in Hindi. She answered, and the driver led them to a black Suburban, the interior outfitted in leather, with a screen between the driver and the passengers, tablets in the headrests, and a cooler between the seats outfitted with champagne.

They settled in, and Knuckles said, “I could get used to this.”

Nadia smiled at him and said, “Me too. Honestly, it’ll be the last time. Once Annaka is married, I’ll probably never see her again.”

He looked at her and said, “Seriously?”

She grew a little wistful and said, “Yeah. We were friends in school, and from what she told me, it was a battle to even invite me to the wedding. Her father was against it. I came from a different world, but we bonded at uni. She got to be herself there, but now she’s in her father’s environment. Once she’s married, she won’t see people like me again.”

He said, “That’s terrible.”

She said, “It’s not so different in your world. She’s the daughter of one of the richest men in the world. I just happened to go to school with her. I doubt Elon Musk’s kids in preschool will have anything to do with their friends after they leave. It’s just life.”

Knuckles had no reply to that.

They rode in silence for a moment, then he started to say something but stopped, glancing at the screen separating them from the driver. She grinned and said, “Don’t worry. It’s soundproof. All of Thakkar’s rides are like this. He does a lot of business in the back of these beasts.”

He said, “Good to know.”

“You were going to say something?”

“Yes. Do you really think the RAW had something to do with the attack at the hotel?”

She said, “I don’t know, but it’s really screwing up my weekend. I was going to have a blast, and now I have to deal with you and a possible terrorist attack.”

He scowled at the words and she laughed again, a tinkling like a bubbling stream that crumbled his fragile bulwarks. She said, “I’m just kidding. Look, I don’t know if it’s the RAW, but something’s going on. I’m convinced those men are going to attack somewhere else. Pike finding a bunch of drone boxes and a single computer in a safe house is not a good sign.”

As the designated “liaison,” Pike had told Knuckles what he’d found in the spice market as soon as he’d left, along with the fact that they had no further information. They’d mirrored a hard drive but hadn’t exploited it yet. The drone boxes alone, however, were concerning.

He said, “You still believe they’re Islamic terrorists?”

She turned to him and said, “Well, yeah. Who else would they be?”

He said, “I don’t know who they are, but I’ve seen plenty of bad things done by people other than Muslim fanatics. It’s easy to blame them, but I’m not so sure these guys are fighting for Allah.”

“Why do you think that? Every indication is they’re LeT run by the Pakistan ISI. That’s what the ISI does.”

He remained silent for a moment, then said, “The men with Jennifer in that hotel room were Chinese. The ISI doesn’t do China’s bidding. If China is behind this, then all bets are off, because they’re probably implicating the Pakis to cover themselves. We don’t know why they’re doing it, but we do know they have the capability to introduce whatever evidence they want. The Ministry of State Security is no joke. It’s the largest intelligence organization on earth. Maybe theywantus to believe it’s Islamic terrorists. I mean ‘we’ in the sense of both the U.S. and India.”

She remained silent for a moment, then said, “That may be true, but I have to go with what the evidence shows. The cell phone data wasconnected to an ISI number, and the pocket litter was from Pakistan. All of that could have been planted, but we have no evidence of it.”

“Wedohave evidence. Jennifer saw Chinese men in the hotel room. The Islamic thing is just too pat. The supposed terrorist you guys found on the hotel staff at the resort had a lot of incriminating stuff from Pakistan but very little to show he was a Muslim. No prayer rugs, no Quran, nothing. If he was a devout Islamist, he had a shitty way of showing it. He was seen drinking booze every night, never acting like a Muslim the entire time he was on the resort grounds, and when you interrogated him, he couldn’t even say if he’s Shia or Sunni. The only actionable intel he had was a cell phone with contacts to the ISI. Like they wanted you to find it.”

“Well, maybe he acted that way before he was detained to throw us off. I mean, a true terrorist wouldn’t wear a keffiyeh with ‘Kill the Infidels’ scribbled on it.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point, but I still think China is behind it. The Pakistan ISI angle is a red herring.”

“Red herring? What does that mean?”

He laughed and said, “It means they’re trying to misdirect us from the true plan. They want it to look like a random terrorist attack, but it was targeted. I agree they had some help, but I’m not so sure it was from the RAW.”

“Who do you think the target was?”

“Well, Iwouldsay it was the head of the CIA, but that doesn’t make any sense because nobody except the head of the RAW knew that he was coming.”

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