If you missed earlier chapters, here: https://wyattwerne.substack.com/s/blackbird
BENGALURU, INDIA
Piyush closed his eyes and took a ragged breath. He tried to visualize where he was going. If he revealed he knew the location of Blackbird…He saw himself, hooded, tied on a bench seat, in a sweltering van with the air conditioning off, his mind in a fugue as the drugs wore off. The breeze on his face and smell of green onion pancakes over diesel fumes meant the window was open. He heard road noise. A heavy truck moaned to his right. His stomach lurched with the van’s creaky suspension every time it hit a pothole or slowed to a stop. Grilled mango and tandoori fruit floated in with the green onion and sesame oil smell, which made his stomach lurch with the van.
Ding. He opened his eyes to see the elevator doors sliding closed. His overactive imagination. His boss’ message said to report to the eighth floor, office 8110, so he stepped in and pushed eight.
If the Americans had not tipped Salman Singh, if he had left when his shift was over, he’d probably have turned in his resignation to the Indian Intelligence Bureau and be back at his apartment with a pint of Kingfisher in his hand working on Act II of his screenplay. Instead, he lingered.
The Hindu Vedas taught that the world was a cosmic drama, a Leela, and his soul was inside a machine made of material energy, like a character in an artificial simulation. The universe was a maya, or illusion, that his brain interpreted and reworked, sometimes falsely. He very much liked this viewpoint, since he was a future playwright. A curse of being a future playwright, an overactive imagination. All the elevator’s smells were real: the elevator motor sounded like a truck engine; diesel fumes drifted from the basement, where there were spare generators to keep the building running during a blackout; two blocks from his office, there was a food cart that sold green onion pancakes and grilled fruit that was popular for lunch. With his eyes closed, he was hooded and in a van, but with his eyes open, the cooked onion smell made his stomach growl, reminding him that his material machine had a fast reactor and needed fuel. He was hungry.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor. The doors opened.
“namaste, Piyush. aap kaise hain?” Hello, Piyush. How are you? Asked a woman in a navy pantsuit entering the elevator. She was important. She worked on this floor, but he couldn’t remember her name.
She smiled, as if approving that he was rising to the eighth floor.
He remained in the elevator corner, bewildered, returning her smile. Did the woman know why he was here? Her smile might mean she was a member of the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, a sister organization of the Indian intelligence community infamous for covert action—assassinations, counter-terrorism, and counter-espionage. If so, he was a chicken, and she was a lioness, smiling, waiting to torture him as a plaything before ripping his guts open.
His boss wouldn’t summon him to the eighth floor to be killed; no, they would murder him in his sleep later tonight because he knew too much. Maybe he’d been summoned to be fired.
He blinked sweat from his eyes, saying, “main bahut badhiya hoon. aur aap?” I’m great. And you? But he was feeling sick and terrified.
She returned a smile that made him feel like dinner. She had long, thick, brown hair and never-ending brown eyes. He wondered what it would be like to be a male praying mantis.
The doors closed.
He’d read about a former IIB analyst who’d left to work cybersecurity for a big retail company, and then received a book deal, which was now being made into a Bollywood movie directed by Atlee. It had a terrible cast, terrible plot, but it was still expected to gross thousands of crore (hundreds of millions of USD).
He had a brilliant idea for a screenplay, where the main character was a triple agent, working for India, China, and America. Action, adventure, explosions, knife fights. China would attempt to invade Taiwan and India would rescue them to bring world peace. It irritated him to read about America promoting itself as the arsenal of democracy, like his elderly, braggart grandfather remembering his youthful escapades. India was the largest democracy in the world and would soon be richer than America. He didn’t mind cooperating with them. Any ally that opposed Islamic fundamentalism and Chinese aggression was a good ally. But every empire had about a century of fame, and America didn’t yet realize that its time was up.
His script would be big. Bollywood would be the new center of the entertainment universe. His parents would no longer be embarrassed that their son did not become a doctor, or nuclear scientist, or learn the sitar. They would not have to lament that he’d be reincarnated as a mosquito. He could hear the gossip at the preta-karma, the traditional funeral ceremony to release the soul. “I am so sorry your son was an IIB analyst-turned-screenwriter,” his cousin would tell his mother. Not sorry he died; sorry he’d turned out to be a disappointing intelligence bureau drone, writing reports about video feeds. His mother would sigh, saying, “perhaps he’ll learn his lesson as a mosquito.” Or maybe his parents wouldn’t have a preta-karma, because the embarrassment would kill them.
His mother’s attitude would change after she’d seen the premier. He’d buy them a bigger house, which would have a sunroom and a temple with statues of Ganesha and Shirdi Sai Baba and Shiva and Krishna and Radha, where they could do yoga in the afternoons.
All he needed to do…The elevator doors opened again. The woman in the navy pantsuit cocked her head and squinted at him.
His mouth stuck in neutral.
She said, in English, “Isn’t this your floor?” The doors were sliding closed, but hooded men weren’t kidnapping him.
Eight was his stop.
He rushed through the elevator doors as they slid closed.
The eighth floor was square, the perimeter lined with secure, closed office doors, all painted in office-standard-cream with white trim. In the center of the floor, a plexiglass room like a fishbowl containing a U-shaped couch, tables and chairs, and two televisions hanging from the ceiling playing the news without sound. To the right of the elevators, a kitchen, lavatories, three vending machines, and then rooms labeled as sleeping rooms. Code word classified information couldn’t leave the floor if people didn’t leave the floor, so analysts were encouraged to sleep and eat here until their assignment ended.
He sighed. People spoke of this floor as if it were a temple to Shiva. But it looked exactly like every other floor he’d seen. Nothing special. His overactive imagination again.
Counting down the office numbers, he passed the kitchen, lavatories, sleeping rooms, and then rounded the corner to 8110. The plaque read DIRECTOR AJAY CHATTERJEE. Director of what, he wondered? After knocking, a distant voice told him to come in.
The Director’s office was deceptively large and painted gray-blue, the pallor of death. At the front, a high, round table that sat four. Bamboo bookshelves lined the walls, crammed with awards. Trophies. Diplomas. Pictures of him shaking hands with the previous two Prime Ministers. Two large black monitors hung on the right wall.
The Director sat behind a mahogany veneered desk. He was late fifties, with short, stiff gray hair and a mustache, and wrinkled, leathery skin that was battle-worn but didn’t appear to have seen sunlight in years.
He waved Piyush to a seat while keeping his eyes on a tablet. “Normally we have recruits go through a very rigorous basic training. A month, where we cover subjects like tradecraft techniques, codeword classification, finance, space technology, cybersecurity, and foreign language skills.” He shook his head. “You have no language skills, no useful weapons training—”
Piyush remained standing, frozen, close to the door in case he needed to escape. “I speak Bangla. And I’ve trained on a pistol.”
The Director shook his head again, the way his college professors sometimes did when he’d given a ridiculous answer or failed a test. “Tell me, do you understand the geopolitical importance of microchips?”
Piyush had written three reports on it, four hundred and sixty-two pages, collectively. It would be in his file, so why would the Director need to ask? He blinked away sweat dripping into his eyes. “I think so, yes.”
The Director harrumphed as if expecting more, then swiped his tablet. “Tell me, you are familiar with Blackbird? It says here you know where its manufactured.”
Piyush’s stomach clenched, and he stopped breathing. Should he lie? He didn’t have clearance and only happened upon the location by accident. But he never disclosed what he saw, only that the previous analyst had violated security procedures by leaving the computer unlocked and the feed running for him to see. But maybe the question was a test? Maybe the IIB investigators knew what he saw, and this was the final interrogation to close the case?
The Director’s brown eyes were staring into Piyush’s soul. He knew Piyush knew. They hadn’t hooded him, or blown his brains out yet, so maybe they would just fire him.
“I—it was an accident. The previous analyst left the feed unlocked and I walked in—”
The Director raised his hand to signal for Piyush to stop talking. “Understand, this is not my idea. This is an arrangement of convenience.”
“Arrangement?”
The Director sighed, then swiped through three screens on his tablet. “I need you to sign this.” He pushed the tablet across his desk.
The Director’s eyes felt like two brown neutron stars pulling Piyush to the edge of the desk.
On the tablet, awaiting his fingerprint, a nondisclosure agreement for a project, codeword KRAIT. The countersigner was DIRECTOR OF RECRUITMENT, AJAY CHATTERJEE, RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS WING.
He wasn’t being fired, or tortured, he was being recruited. Why? What was the project? Inside India, RAW enjoyed vigorous support. They’d adopted the same tactics as the American’s CIA and the Israeli Mossad, although perhaps RAW was not as ruthless as China or Russia. Outside India, RAW, notorious for assassinations, often received scathing foreign press. Last year, Italy expelled and reprimanded RAW officers for poisoning a separatist who’d masterminded a car bomb in Punjab. Hypocrisy. India was strong, and a powerful country tracked and hunted its enemies wherever they were, even if they were sipping wine on the Spanish Steps while raising international capital for more car bombs.
He’d murdered people, but only in short stories and screenplays. To be read into project KRAIT, he needed to press his thumb on the screen. The nondisclosure said he couldn’t tell anyone, not for a hundred and twenty years, certainly not in a screenplay, and not even the future wife he didn’t have yet.
Piyush pressed his thumb. The Director reeled the tablet towards him like a trap had just snared Piyush. His heart leaped in his chest. The Director pressed his thumb, swiped the tablet closed, and then stood.
A wide, wrinkled, leathery hand reached across the desk. “Welcome to the RWA, Piyush Kumar. Your basic training is over.”
“What?” His voice sounded like the yelp of a dying animal.
The Director didn’t reply. His hand stuck across the desk like a coiled snake, waiting to spring and bite Piyush.
Piyush shook the Director’s hand limply. His palms glistened with sweat. “Why me?”
The Director withdrew his hand. “One less person we have to tell about Blackbird, of course. You’re already in the club.” Another harrumph crossed his lips, and he sat. “And now to the briefing. We have an assignment for you.”
The Director tapped his tablet and to Piyush’s right, one of the wall monitors blinked on, displaying a woman with brown eyes, in a steely gray cabin, wearing an American naval officer’s blue digital camouflage uniform and a hijab under a blue digital camo cap.
The Director said, “This is Chandi Faridi, who will be your handler.”
Her mouth was moving. Another tap by the Director and she was saying, “Hello? Piyush? Can you hear me?”
“We can hear you,” the Director said.
“I don’t have a lot of time. Piyush, it’s good to meet you.”
He stared. For how long, he wasn’t sure. Her headscarf and American naval uniform made his stomach angry, and he didn’t know why. He blurted, “I’ll be working with an American?”
She said, “A disguise, Piyush. I am not American. I worked with them years ago, very briefly. I am RAW, like you.” She unwrapped the hajib and took it off.
He wasn’t RAW, at least until a minute ago. Wasn’t there a training period, or a probationary period, or something? The Director said basic training is over, but when did it start?
He was sure that if he was going to kill people, he needed a gun. Something big and brutal. Indian special forces carried Brügger & Thomet MP9 machine pistols with detachable silencers. A nine-hundred rounds per minute firing rate, a one-hundred meter effective range, and the lightest machine pistol made because it was primarily polymer. If he was going to sneak into his apartment and kill himself, forty rounds from a B&T MP9 would pulverize his skull and paint his walls in a pink mist. He smiled. All the good guys in his screenplay carried them.
“It is a very good disguise. Can I choose my gun? I’d like to request a Brügger & Thomet MP9.”
Faridi’s smile creased into the mocking you’re-cute-but-naïve smirk his mother gave him as a child.
The Director said, “This isn’t a video game, Piyush.”
“I qualified on an IOF 9 millimeter. I request that.” The IOF was puny. A copy of a Browning Hi-Power designed in 1914. Archaic and insignificant compared with the Swiss precision of the Brügger & Thomet machine pistol. But it was still a gun.
“Better not to carry,” the Director said. “You could shoot yourself in the leg. Or worse, blow your cover. For this mission you won’t need a gun.”
No gun. He was starting
“ to think he was the redshirt, the random character Brahmin inserted into the story who died near the end.
“Listen I don’t have a lot of time,” Faridi said. “Piyush, the Director will give you a USB flash drive. I will send encrypted instructions. You will make a video per the instructions and deliver it.”
“To who?”
“I will tell you that, later.”
“When?”
“When I set it up. Do you know what a dead drop is?”
“That’s like when I drop a package in a random toilet stall for another spy.”
“Something like that. You will load the flash drive and then drop it where I tell you to drop it. Meanwhile, I need a report on Fuzhou, and the storm, every fifteen minutes, along with status from the Blackbird facility.”
The storm. A cell had formed in the Pacific and was metastasizing into a typhoon aimed for the same target as Fuzhou, Zhanjiang.
“The Americans know about Blackbird,” he said.
“I know, Piyush,” Faridi said. “I made sure they didn’t get the parts from the drone strike. But Salman will lead them to the other copy. I will lead them away. We need to make sure the Chinese copy of Blackbird does not fall into American hands. It would be a disaster.”
“And kill Salman?”
“Yes, but maybe not before he experiences the savagery he inflicted on those women.”
The Director said, “Now, Faridi, we aren’t China. Don’t make a spectacle of it. Get on with it.”
Faridi didn’t respond. She and the Director appeared locked in a virtual staring contest.
After a few beats, Piyush broke the stalemate. “May I ask what will be the nature of the video?”
“I will provide detailed instructions. We’ve received intelligence that suggests China may know the true location, but you will deliver information that will lead them into a trap.”
If he were to deliver information, he should look the part. Double agents always wore expensive suits in movies. “I should buy a new suit.”
Faridi resumed mocking him with her half-smile and eyebrows. The Director said, “You look like you sleep in those clothes. Perfect.”
Faridi said, “Your cover is an IIB analyst with access to Nakshatra Six. Just be you, it’s believable.”
Nakshatra Six was the name for the constellation of sentinel satellites watching the facility where Blackbird was manufactured.
Just be you. His cover was himself, and he was not the redshirt. He was bait for a lethal geopolitical trap.
Terrified, he couldn’t breathe. Chinese MSS agents were ruthless and liked to torture their prey by drilling toes. Would it be worth it?
“Do I have a choice?” he asked.
“Of course you have a choice, Piyush,” the Director said, scowling, plainly insulted by the question. “We can’t force you. This is not communist China. Being a field operative always carries great risk and we only take volunteers.”
“What about the fact that I know the location of Blackbird?”
“If you decline, you will still be bound by the nondisclosure. There are civil and criminal penalties for revealing code word classified information.”
But not torture. The elephant on his chest lifted. He had a choice. The IIB wouldn’t kill him in his sleep. Those nightmares were just his overactive imagination.
If he weren’t doing this, he’d be at home finishing his manuscript and then querying agents to accept it. The odds were fifty to one that someone would buy his first screenplay. The query process trammeled authors until only those willing to eat their fingers off to sell a manuscript survived. But as a former RAW spy, it was a certainty he’d get published. The best way to become a tortured artist was to become an artist who’d been tortured and humiliated at the hands of the Chinese. It might be the only way. He smiled. Yes, it would be worth it. What author wouldn’t submit to having their toes drilled to get published? Every author would, because bones healed, but the sting of a thousand rejections lasted a lifetime.
“No problem,” he said, puffing his chest.
“Good. The Chinese, we think, are preparing a raid, so its imperative that we deliver the video soon. Prepare for a long night ahead.”
Faridi’s hand reached towards the camera, and then she closed her laptop. The screen went black, reflecting his squinting eyes and perplexed face. A raid. He didn’t see how that was possible. Blackbird was manufactured on HabiSat Eight, and HabiSat Eight was three hundred and seventy-five thousand kilometers away, completely secure in the vacuum of space.