"Shaukat, you issue a directive: every logistics company operating in the Tribal Areas must have ISO-9001 certification to access the National Highways. No certification, no truck. No truck, no pipeline."
Shaukat stared at the page, then up at me. "ISO compliance," he murmured, as if tasting the absurdity.
"Exactly," I said. "Absurdity is camouflage."
I tapped the paper lightly.
"And who issues certification? A joint task force of Motorway Police and… Indian quality inspectors."
The silence that followed was almost comical.
Shaukat's eyebrows rose. "Indian inspectors in Waziristan," he said, slow. "That's a death sentence."
"They won't be in Waziristan," I replied. "They'll be at the gates. At the exits. At the border checks. At the points where the trucks have nowhere else to go."
I leaned forward slightly, letting the logic settle into their bones.
"We don't choke the snake by wrestling its head in the mountains," I said. "We choke it at the narrow place where it must pass."
I pointed at the header.
"We call it a 'Common Safety Protocol' for the new Silk Road," I said. "The world loves that phrase. It sounds like trade. It sounds like progress. It sounds like something Washington and Beijing can nod at without reading the fine print."
Shaukat's pen moved again, this time not tapping—scribbling.
"Second," I said, and turned my gaze to Mahmood.
"The Indian hawks," I said. "The loud ones. The ones who sell anger like a product."
Mahmood's eyes sharpened. "Yes."
"I want dossiers," I said. "On their Dubai shell companies. Their Gulf-linked charities. Their sons' real estate purchases. Their wives' offshore trusts."
Mahmood's lips pressed into a line. He understood what this was: not intelligence for defense, but intelligence for pressure.
"I want those dossiers," I continued, "lost—publicly."
Shaukat looked up. "To the press?"
"No," I said. "To their rivals."
I let the idea breathe.
"Let the Indian opposition do our work," I said. "Let the voters watch their 'saviors' feeding from the same hand they claim to hate."
This was not propaganda. Propaganda was loud. This was accounting.
A man could survive a scandal. He could survive a protest. But he could not survive the suspicion that his hatred was sponsored.
Mahmood looked at the paper, then at me. Something new flickered behind his eyes—recognition that the battlefield had moved to a place where generals didn't naturally dominate.
I picked up the third order, but I didn't slide it. I held it between my fingers like a warrant.
"And finally," I said.
My hand reached for the internal phone line—not the hotline to Vajpayee. Not diplomacy. Not drama.
The line to the State Bank.
I dialed, waited, listened to the click of connection, then spoke without changing my tone.
"Prepare the framework for a 'Special Tax on Foreign Infrastructure'," I said. "Target any company linked to dredging suppliers, port expansion explosives, and Gulf-facing subcontractors. Cross-reference with our lists."
I listened, then continued:
"We're not seizing assets. We're not making speeches. We are simply… auditing them."
The person on the other end started to reply—procedures, timelines, concerns. I cut through it gently.
"Do it," I said. "Quietly."
I placed the receiver down.
Mahmood stared at the paper in my hand as if it were a new kind of weapon.
"You're not fighting a war," he said slowly. "You're performing a hostile takeover… of the entire conflict."
I didn't deny it.
I set the paper down and walked toward the window. The glass was cold against the back of my knuckles when I touched it. Outside, Islamabad's lights flickered in the distance, fragile as a patient's heartbeat.
Somewhere in the Salt Range, the first Indian pilgrims were sleeping in a convoy under my Blue Force umbrella. They were old men and women with prayer beads and tired joints, following a line of hope toward Katas Raj. They didn't know how close they had been to becoming a headline.
In Waziristan, laboratories still hummed. Chemistry didn't care about ideology. It cared about demand.
And in Dubai, men in immaculate robes likely raised glasses and spoke of stability, investment, partnership—words so polished they could cut.
They would be toasting to their next "incident."
I kept my voice low, almost private, as if speaking to the city itself.
"They have the guns," I said. "They have the God-complex."
I turned back toward Mahmood and Shaukat.
"But I have the ledger."
The fan clicked overhead again, like approval.
"And in the end," I said, eyes narrowing into the chill of decision, "the auditor always wins."
I walked back to the desk and placed my palm flat on Project Transparency: Logistics Audit 2001—not like a man swearing an oath, but like a man claiming ownership.
"Launch the audit," I said.
Then, almost as an afterthought—but it wasn't—my gaze sharpened.
"And tell Vajpayee to keep the Sanskriti Express running," I added. "I want the world to see that while they try to blow up the tracks, we are busy checking the tickets."
Mahmood nodded once—slowly, the way a soldier accepts an unfamiliar doctrine.
Shaukat's pen stopped moving. He looked at the orders again, then at me, and for the first time his expression wasn't merely technical.
It was something closer to awe.
Because he understood: wars could be survived. Audits, however, were designed to be fatal.
And tonight, Islamabad had stopped behaving like a capital.
It had begun behaving like an accounting firm with teeth.