At the back gate of the railway station, Abbas appeared five minutes after Atharv got there. He was on a black bike with a pillion rider.

‘Come, hop on to the bike,’ he said.

For the next hour, Abbas sped through the deserted roads, not uttering a word. Finally, he stopped near a roadside eatery on what looked like a highway.

‘This is called Border Road. The international border is roughly 250 metres to the west from here,’ Abbas told Atharv, gesturing at him to follow. The duo and the third man, who had not been introduced to Atharv, walked towards the back of the eatery. Behind it lay a trail that led to a nearby forested tract. About 300 metres ahead, the trail stopped at a fortified border check post.

‘Murshid, you take over now,’ Abbas said.

Abbas’s companion nodded and took Atharv straight up to a man in khaki who was seated at the check post. A sentry with an AK-47 stood by him.

‘Sir, please help this man. He is student, he lost passport, he study in college in Dhaka,’ Murshid said in halting, broken English.

The man in khaki stared at the duo before snarling, ‘Have you brought another fraudulent client here?’ Turning to Atharv, he barked, ‘Who is your father? Dial his number and make him talk to me.’

Atharv dialled the number of the Reay Road PCO, which was near his flat and which he frequented on an almost daily basis, taking a chance. There was no answer, so he called again. The PCO owner, whom he sometimes addressed as ‘Anna’, would never pick up the phone at 5 a.m.

‘Too early, sir, my father is sleeping,’ Atharv said.

‘Then get lost and come later when your father is bloody up,’ the man said. He seemed in a foul mood.

A second later, he said, ‘Never mind. I will see what can be done.’

He said something inaudible to the sentry, who nodded and then took Atharv through the check post. He let out a shrill whistle and raised his hand. Thirty seconds later, an answering whistle was heard from the Bangladeshi check post across the border.

The sentry spoke to the Bangladeshi trooper, who came and stood at the edge of the no-man’s land between the two check posts. The Indian sentry explained Atharv’s predicament to his counterpart. After arguing for a while, the Bangladeshi trooper asked Atharv to cross over the fences on the Indian side and get to his side across the stretch of no-man’s land.

Once he was safely across, the Bangladeshi trooper guided Atharv to the nearest bus stop, from where the latter took a bus to the small town of Shahbazpur. From there, Atharv took a bus to Dhaka. He had already booked an air ticket from Dhaka to Kathmandu, using his Indian passport.

47. ‘YOU COULD KILL JUST TWO, BABAR?’

47

‘YOU COULD KILL JUST TWO, BABAR?’