I didn't say it out loud. Names carried weight in this business, and weight had consequences.
Mahmood stared at the screen as if he could will the truth to change shape.
Sharma leaned closer to Javed.
"You said you were ISI," Sharma murmured. "But ISI doesn't use Dubai harbor explosives. They use what we can't trace easily. And they don't hire amateurs who get caught before the dust settles."
Javed's lips parted. No answer came.
Sharma removed a photograph and laid it on the table.
Not a general. Not a militant. Not a martyr.
A boy.
Sun-browned, too young to look that tired, wearing the uniform of a construction camp. Eyes half-shut against a light that never forgave.
Javed's face changed in a single second. The practiced hardness cracked and something raw came through.
Sharma's voice softened—not with pity, but with precision.
"Your brother was arrested yesterday."
A lie. I heard it the way one hears a switch click into place.
"The police found contraband in his locker," Sharma continued. "He's looking at a long sentence. Unless…"
Javed's breath broke.
The room's clinical neutrality shattered, not in noise, but in the sudden presence of fear. Real fear. The kind that comes from being owned.
"They said they would kill him," Javed whispered. Then louder, like confession might resurrect the boy. "They said if I didn't do the drama, he would never come home."
His forehead hit the steel table. Once. Twice.
"They gave me the words!" he sobbed. "They told me to say ISI if I was caught. They told me to say Rawalpindi. They wanted the Indians to be angry. They wanted the border to close."
He looked up, eyes wet, pleading not for mercy but for the chance to undo what couldn't be undone.
"They said… they said this would be a spark."
A spark.
That was always how it began. A spark in a crowded place. A spark near a train. A spark near a border gate. And then men with microphones on television begging for war as if it were a cure.
I cut the audio feed.
The silence in the booth returned like a controlled substance—measured, rationed.
Mahmood didn't speak for a long moment. His eyes remained on the screen. His expression was not outrage. It was recognition.
"The Dubai nexus," he said finally, voice low. "They didn't just fund the riots. They manufactured the confession."
"They didn't want truth," I replied. "They wanted momentum."
Mahmood's jaw flexed again. "They wanted us to react."
"They wanted your pride," I said. "And his survival."
I could already see it: headlines, studio panels, retired generals, angry anchors, "unanswered questions," "hard decisions," "no choice but to respond." A machine that ran on grievance.
"They played two states like a cheap harmonium," I said. "Same tune. Different hands."
0300 Hours
Paperwork would come later. Paper was slow. Paper had politics.
I picked up the red phone and dialed without asking permission from the room.
"Prime Minister," I said, not waiting for his greeting. "The confession is a product. The explosives are commercial—harbor slurry. They held the boy's brother in the Gulf to buy his tongue."
There was a pause. I could hear him breathing. Not shaken—thinking.
Then Vajpayee spoke, voice quieter than his public self, stronger than his age.
"So the enemy is not in Islamabad," he said. "And he is not in Delhi."
"He is in boardrooms," I answered. "And he is terrified of our Bazaar."
Another pause. Somewhere, on television screens, men were already yelling. Somewhere, in drawing rooms, people were already choosing hatred because it was simpler than doubt.
"The hawks will call this cover-up," Vajpayee said. "They will say we staged the joint interrogation."
"Then we don't give them a report," I said. "We give them a target."
My gaze dropped to the file waiting on my desk—Suraksha Foundation, labor contracts, investment routes disguised as charity and influence.
"Excellency," I said, "it's time we stop being the Gulf's security guards and become their auditors."
On the other end, Vajpayee exhaled slowly, the sound of a man deciding to step on glass to avoid fire.
"Agreed," he said. "Let the Sanskriti Express continue. We will not be governed by manufactured tragedy."
I hung up and the room felt different—not warmer, not safer, but clearer.
The war was no longer on the border.
It was in permits. In tenders. In subcontractors. In visas issued to "consultants" who arrived with smiles and left behind smoke.
I turned to Mahmood.
"Get me files on every UAE-funded construction project in Pakistan," I said. "Every one. Especially anything tied to ports, dredging, roads—anything that touches industrial explosives."
Mahmood's gaze was still fixed on the screen. "And India?"
"They'll do it their way," I replied. "Quietly. We don't need theatrics. We need pressure."
I opened another folder, already marked, already waiting.
"Tell Suddle to review visas," I said. "Every 'advisor.' Every 'consultant.' Every man who walks in with Gulf money and walks out with our fires."
Mahmood finally looked at me. His voice carried something close to admiration, and something close to warning.
"You're turning this into an economic war."
"No," I said. "I'm turning it into an audit."
I glanced at the interrogation room again—the steel table, the four chairs, the mirror that watched both capitals at once.
"They can't beat armies," I said softly. "So they purchase accidents. They can't invade countries. So they buy men and rent their fear."
I stood.
"And I know how to balance ledgers."