August 23, 1947
The afternoon sun cast long, merciless shadows across the makeshift office as Anirban studied the intelligence reports spread before him. Only days had passed since independence, and already the seams in the newborn nation were straining. Communal fires smoldered in Punjab, refugees flowed in ragged lines across the new borders, and the princely states watched, calculating.
A knock cut through his concentration. "Enter," he called, not looking up from the great map of Kashmir pinned to his desk.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stepped in, his face a mask of controlled alarm. Behind him was a man Anirban did not expect to see in an Indian uniform — Major General Akbar Khan. The name should have put Anirban on the defensive; in another life-line of history this Khan belonged to Pakistan. The sensation of a timeline warping made the hair at the back of his neck rise.
"Prime Minister," Patel said, taking the chair opposite him. "We have a problem. Our sources report unusual activity along the Northwest Frontier: tribal gatherings, weapons moving, advisors in civilian dress."
Anirban set the report down and fixed Khan with a stare that felt like winter. The man's face was carefully neutral; too carefully. Anirban's mind — quick, cataloguing — ran through what he knew. This Khan's presence in an Indian commission meant one of two things: catastrophe or an opportunity.
"General Khan," he said quietly, measuring each syllable, "what's your assessment?"
Khan shifted, and for a blink Anirban caught something — a micro-gesture of surprise, a split-second tremor where a practiced mask slipped. "Sir, the tribes are restless, but nothing we can't handle with proper deployment. A show of force along the border should be sufficient."
Anirban's smile did not reach his eyes. The room narrowed to the space between them. "Curious," he said. "A man of your rank with limited knowledge of Pakistani dispositions a hundred kilometres away. How does that come to pass?"
Patel frowned; the old statesman sensing danger but without the tools to name it. Khan's jaw worked. "Our intelligence on Pakistani deployments is… constrained. But there have been communications — prisoner exchanges, border demarcation."
"Through proper channels?" Anirban's voice sharpened. A pause. A flicker of the eyes to the door. All the little betrayals the body makes when the mind is lying.
"Not all of them, sir. Some were informal. Soldier to soldier."
Enough, thought Anirban. He rose now, slow and deliberate, and moved to the map as if to point. "Sardar, please have General Khan escorted to the old British interrogation cells in the Red Fort. Secure the basement." The command landed like a guillotine.
Khan's protest split the air. "This is outrageous — I have served this nation—"
"You have served your interests," Anirban said, voice flat and final. "You are Major General Akbar Khan of Pakistan. You are an intrusion, a carefully placed impossibility. And impossibilities are dangerous."
The mask on Khan's face slipped entirely then; the color drained. He stumbled back, a man whose theatre had been exposed. The guards moved, and Khan's composure snapped toward panic. For the briefest, crystalline second, his hand dove for the pistol at his hip.
Time contracted.
Anirban did not think; he acted. He closed the two-yard distance in a heartbeat, an economy of motion honed by a kind of savant calm. Khan's muzzle cleared his sleeve; the hammer fell free. Khan's finger found the trigger.
Anirban reached out — not with pleading words but with a small, hard object in his palm: a heavy gold fountain pen, the kind men carried in pockets as both ornament and secret tool. He slammed his fist upward into Khan's wrist, web-to-web, driving the pen high into the fleshy place between thumb and index. Pain exploded across Khan's hand.
The gun discharged — once, a shock of noise — the bullet ripping into the plaster above the map. For half a heartbeat the world was a bright, ringing nothing. Khan's arm convulsed; the pistol jerked. The blow to the web, the shock of the pen, the twist Anirban applied, all worked with brutal, surgical efficiency. Khan's grip loosened. The gun clattered across the table and skittered under a stack of reports.
Khan went down then, not gracefully but like someone unmasked and broken. Blood ran from a shallow cut on his palm where metal and pen had met; his eyes were wild, animal raw with betrayal and fear. The guards took him before he could form another word.
A silence swallowed the room — the kind that comes after violence and before a thousand consequences. Patel stood rooted, his jaw slack, the old moral scaffolding not yet rebuilt for this new age of decisions.
Anirban's hands trembled only once, then stilled. He set the pen back in his vest pocket as if nothing had happened. The sound of the spent bullet, ricocheted somewhere unheard, a punctuation to the small, pure moment of violence.
"Take him to the facility," Anirban said softly, the voice of a man who had just closed a wound and already planned a campaign. "Extract everything. Every contact, every plan, every piece of intelligence he's shared or promised to share. I don't care if you have to break every bone in his body to get it."
Khan's eyes widened in horror." You can't be serious! This is barbaric..."
"Barbaric?" Anirban's laugh was devoid of warmth. "Listen here, you seek to destroy my nation, bleed my people, and doing all of this unprovoked, that...is what barbarism looks like. What I'm doing is simply effective. And if you cooperate fully, you might even survive the experience. Your family, of course, will be watched carefully to ensure they harbor no similar treasonous inclinations."
Patel's face read dismay and a dawning comprehension. "Prime Minister — such methods —"
"They are necessary, Sardar sahib." Anirban's reply was calm, unadorned. "The British held power because they wielded it when others wouldn't. I will not make their mistake of showing mercy to those who would see India broken."Anirban's eyes never left khan's terrified face." I won't make mistakes of showing mercy to traitors."
As the guards dragged khan away, his protest echoing down the corridor, Anirban Sat in his chair.When the door closed behind Patel and the trailing guards, Anirban pulled open another folder. Maps, troop movements, lines of supply and discord — the chessboard of a nation. "This is not a mere raid," he said aloud, as though rehearsing to himself. "They plan a larger operation: tribal militias as the vanguard, Pakistani regulars in the shadows. We have three, maybe four weeks."
He tapped points on the map — Kashmir, then the western coast. "When they move, we won't merely defend. We will strike in concert: here, in East Bengal as it's already controlled by INA, and on the western littoral. We will force them back into a rump and claim control of the coastline from Karachi to Chittagong. The world will watch and learn that weakness invites aggression."
Patel listened, the old strategist's scepticism unspooling into acceptance. "Resources, coordination — the risks—"
"The risk of inaction is greater," Anirban snapped. He closed the folder with a soft but decisive thud. "Sardar, call General Cariappa. Quiet consultations only. Choose men who understand war is not a gentleman's game. We'll also need discreet allies in Congress and beyond — those who will not falter at the sight of blood."
"And who are these allies?" Patel asked.
Anirban's smile was a blade. "Those who have already stained their hands for the nation. Officers and soldiers who know what must be done: Captain Lakshmi Sahgal, Shah Nawaz Khan — men and women who accept that sometimes democracy requires leaders willing to get their hands dirty. We will cultivate the Hindu Mahasabha's fervor and channel it into a reformed force. Syama Prasad Mukherjee, Veer Savarkar — bring them close, harness that resolve."
Patel nodded slowly, the old statesman taking in the cold arithmetic of the plan. "And Mountbatten?"
"Arrange a meeting," Anirban said. "It's time we discussed India's rightful place on the United Nations Security council."
" The UN Security Council? But Prime Minister, The permanent members have already been established,"
"Have they?" Anirban smile widened
"When we control the sea lanes and half a continent's heart, the question of our place at the Council will be a matter of fact rather than petition."
After the room emptied, Anirban sat alone with the map, the taste of copper and dust in the air. Khan, stripped of his disguise and turned suddenly to advantage, would be a tool: the false signals he carried could be fed back to Pakistan to shape their moves. It was an ugly, dangerous trade—blood for leverage—but Anirban's mind moved easily in those shadows.
He slid his fountain pen from his pocket and twirled it between two fingers, the gold catching the light. For a moment his face showed something not often allowed in public: a faint, private satisfaction. The first move had been made. The game was bloody and precise, and Anirban intended to win it utterly.