The Meadow (20 page)

Eventually the women were informed that the Deputy Superintendent, the senior officer responsible for Pahalgam police station, was ‘not available’. Where was he, Jane asked. ‘Out of station,’ said someone unhelpfully. They were told that a Duty Inspector would take down their story instead. His belly flopping over the bright silver buckle of his police-issue belt, the officer entered the room and, without looking at the women seated before him, began talking in Kashmiri to the assembly of constables. Some of them laughed and joked. One of the women asked what was going on. Shuffling papers in his logbook, the Inspector ignored her. Jane felt her frustration welling up again. All these minutes wasted gave the kidnappers another half-mile up into the mountains. Why could they get no one’s attention? Julie wanted to scream, ‘Men’s lives are hanging by a thread! Can someone please just take some notes?’ All over the station phones began trilling as news of the kidnappings spread across the police network. No one answered them. A constant stream of men brought files and bits of paper for the Inspector to sign. ‘I was in such a stupor I have no idea of his name,’ Jane says, ‘but I do remember lots of carbon paper.’

The women tried to be as helpful as they could. The Inspector eventually began, taking down their names (spelt wrongly) and details of their itinerary to date (mangled), confirming locations and trekking routes on a large hand-drawn map of the area on the wall. To the accompaniment of constant mutterings from the gathered mass of junior ranks, he asked about their guides, who had melted away the
moment the women had entered the police station, except for Dasheer, who was being restrained in another room. Jane had made up her mind that Bashir and Sultan were innocent of any involvement, and her suspicions had turned instead to the itinerant herders they had met on the paths: ‘There had been lots of
gujjars
,
bakarwals
and locals moving about.’ Ignoring her, the Inspector issued orders to bring the guides and pony-
wallahs
in for interrogation. Looking at him, Jane feared for them.

Finally, the Inspector asked about the kidnappers. ‘Julie, who was very artful, drew sketches of many of them,’ says Jane. ‘We turned these over to the Kashmiri police, but later on nobody was able to find them again.’ She had been thinking as if this was
Crimewatch
, on which an identikit picture might help crack the case, rather than Kashmir, where the insurgents were so numerous that few files were kept on any of them, only thousands of photos of mutilated corpses that were displayed in a morbid black museum at the headquarters of the Rashtriya Rifles, images the army used to propel new recruits into battle and to show off to visiting politicians from New Delhi.

It was only when Jane disclosed that she had a handwritten note from the kidnappers that the babble quietened. Tangible evidence. The women were taken off to a larger room, with benches pushed against one wall on which sat rows of unopened files. ‘Please show me the note,’ the Inspector demanded. Jane was reluctant, having seen him scrunch Julie’s sketches into a drawer. In any case, it was addressed to ‘the American Government’. He insisted, and grabbing it, zeroed in on the demands, especially the list of twenty-one prisoners.

His finger hovered over the name ‘Masood Azhar’, and he raised an eyebrow. The Afghani too. A dry cough. Then he found Langrial, the warrior revered by Pakistani
jihadis
as ‘Darwesh’. He glanced at Jane, and asked if she knew anything about these men. She shook her head. They were all main players in the Movement, he said, adding that it was a Pakistan-backed militant group, as he saw that they did not understand him. Masood Azhar was the outfit’s chief ideologue, he thought, and had been captured in Kashmir the previous winter. India would never give him up. Did they realise this was an
exceptionally serious situation? Growing desperate, Jane pointed out that the letter had been signed ‘al Faran’. The Inspector shrugged, saying he had never heard of it.

The Inspector turned on her. What had they been doing up there? Didn’t they know the mountains were crawling with militants? This was the second kidnapping they’d had to deal with in a year. Jane could not believe what she was hearing. Why hadn’t they been warned by the tourist police, government officials, the guides, the pony-
wallahs
, the soldiers who had waved to them, or the local police who had seen them leave? What did he mean by ‘the second kidnapping’? The Inspector frowned before explaining that the previous one had involved ‘a pair of Britishers’, but it had worked out all right. It had taken place in June 1994, near Aru, and the two foreigners involved had been released unharmed. He couldn’t remember their names, but he was sure Masood Azhar’s outfit had also been behind that episode.

The situation was even worse than the women had thought. An unknown militant group was demanding the release of twenty-one Muslim terrorists, men that India would never hand over. Nothing in Jane’s well-ordered world had prepared her for something of this magnitude, or the double talk and deception that had got her here. She needed Don and his legal pad. She wanted to get out of this stifling office and away from this Inspector who gave the impression of not caring about her husband or the other three hostages. Extracting the kidnappers’ letter, along with an inky copy of the FIR, the women hailed a ride to Srinagar.

As they drove back down a road she had never expected to see again, passing the Aishmuqam shrine before turning onto National Highway 1A at Anantnag, Jane was numb. If things had gone to plan, she and Don would have been back in Srinagar by now, shopping and relaxing, having left the mountains via the village of Sumbal. ‘Later on, I drove by car past where that valley meets the road, and was heartsick knowing that we might have exited there,’ she recalled. ‘I really could have just cried.’ Instead, she was sitting in a taxi with two British
women she barely knew, but whose lives had become inextricably linked with hers by the events of the past twenty-four hours.

It was dark by the time they got to the city, and the Pahalgam taxi driver had trouble locating the office of the United Nations Military Observer Group for India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), which the women had been advised to head for. Since 1949, UN observers had maintained a low-key presence in Srinagar, supposedly monitoring the Line of Control, the ceasefire line between India and Pakistan. But most of the time they were not permitted even to leave their office, a Raj-era blue-and-white mansion, ringed by high fences and
chinar
trees, that resembled a British
sahib
’s summer residence.

Inside, the UN staff made it clear that getting tangled up with the kidnapping was the last thing they needed. Their presence in Kashmir was already on a knife-edge. The chief said the women could stay at the local UN guesthouse for two days only. He explained that the previous year he had been involved in negotiations for the release of Kim Housego and David Mackie, an episode that had tarred UNMOGIP’s relations with New Delhi for months after. They could not afford a repeat of the situation. ‘Everyone seemed to know about this previous kidnapping except us,’ Jane thought as they headed off to the guesthouse.

By midnight on 5 July there had been no further word from the kidnappers, and nothing of consequence from the Indian authorities either, although at the UN compound the women had at least been able to use a satellite phone to update their families. ‘Julie just cried and cried,’ recalled her mother Anita Sullivan. In Blackburn, Paul’s father Bob was threatening to get straight on a plane and ‘march into the mountains myself’.

No one slept well that night. Jane stayed up late, doing what she always did in an emergency: the debrief. She wrote down every detail, lest she forgot a crucial snippet of information, banishing any feelings of regret the moment they crept into her mind: ‘It was a very uncertain time. We hadn’t been informed about how the Indians intended to respond to the kidnapping, although we hoped that they would do their best to secure the release of our loved ones as quickly as they
could.’ Julie lay awake too, haunted by those grimy bearded faces, the guns that smelled of cold tar and grease, Keith walking off into the rain. Cath could not get to grips with the hell her holiday had become, and regretted ever agreeing to the plan.

By the time they woke up the next morning, exhausted and frightened of what the day would bring, a large pack of Kashmiri photographers and journalists had massed at the guesthouse entrance, and pictures of Don, Keith and Paul were being splashed across the world. In Middlesbrough, the headline in the local paper read: ‘KIDNAPPED: Rebels Seize Tourists on Dream Trip’. Mavis and Charlie Mangan were photographed sitting on the sofa in their front room, and the paper had got hold of a picture of Julie and Keith taken on the day of their leaving party, both of them grinning from ear to ear, arms wrapped around each other. ‘Julie rang from Kashmir last night in total shock,’ Mavis told a reporter. ‘I wanted to jump on the first plane out there, but I couldn’t do anything. We don’t know much about these kidnappers, only that they are Kashmiri rebels.’ Charlie added, ‘I didn’t want him to go out there because of the dangers, but this is what he wanted to do.’

The paper reported that Philip Barton, from the British High Commission in New Delhi, was now in Srinagar, ‘giving assistance to the Indian authorities’. A High Commission spokesman said Barton would be ‘taking what action he can’, but that the tourists should not have been trekking anywhere near Pahalgam: ‘It is a particularly dangerous area because of previous kidnappings. We have advised tourists not to travel there and that has been our policy for some time.’ There was also an ominous-sounding comment from a Foreign Office spokesman: ‘We will do what we can.’ The families, who had been actively assured by everyone that it was safe to travel to the region, bristled.

The women’s mood lifted a little when they heard that the embassies’ representatives had arrived. Then two young diplomats walked in, looking significantly younger than them, thought Julie and Jane. Philip Barton, a thirty-one-year-old political officer, recently posted from Venezuela, told Julie and Cath that he had been to Kashmir a few
times. But he had limited contacts, due to the restrictions the Indian government placed on foreign diplomats visiting the region. Taking the two British women to one side, he assured them that the Foreign Office would do all it could. It was already talking to Scotland Yard’s specialist hostage-negotiation team, and the Indians had promised the British that ‘a massive search was under way’. He seemed keen to keep the Indians happy, impressing on Julie and Cath the need to say as little as possible about the kidnapping to the media. The more publicity was given to the incident, the more the kidnappers would be convinced their captives were valuable, and the harder they would bargain before releasing them.

What had they been doing in the mountains, Barton asked gently. Had they not seen the warnings about Pahalgam, which was considered to be particularly dangerous because of the previous kidnapping and ongoing militant activities? For some time the Foreign Office had been advising tourists not to travel there. Crying, Cath and Julie explained that Indian officials had told them the opposite. Barton, sensing a clash of opinions, backed off. Instead, he went off in search of a secure phone line.

Tim Buchs, a Second Secretary at the US Embassy, seemed unsure too, according to Jane. He had only recently arrived in India, and this was only his second visit to Kashmir. The first had been the previous month, when he had helped organise the Pahalgam fishing trip for Ambassador Frank Wisner. It had turned into something of a catastrophe, he admitted, with Kashmiris reacting testily to Wisner’s much-publicised and ill-advised claim that the valley was ‘tired’ of the militancy. Buchs had learned from that experience that nothing said or done in Kashmir was inconsequential. Jane sensed that this unhappy experience would determine Buchs’ and the other diplomats’ actions now: ‘I don’t know if all the decisions they made were right or wrong. I constantly think of all the things I might have done differently, and only wish I knew then what I know now. It’s easy to find fault, to blame and second-guess.’

Buchs asked Jane if she had seen the latest State Department advisory. Dated 25 November 1994, it read: ‘In July 1994, an American
tourist was fatally shot in Srinagar, and in June 1994 militants held two British hikers hostage for 18 [sic] days before releasing them. These recent events demonstrate that the Kashmir Valley remains a dangerous place where terrorist activities and civil disturbances continue.’ Jane shook her head, explaining how she and Don had gone to the US Embassy in New Delhi but had been put off by the heat and the enormous queue. No matter, Buchs said. What mattered now was getting her husband back. He told her the in-country FBI agents had already been briefed, and that a second specialist team was shortly to arrive from the FBI offices in Quantico, Virginia.

Anything she could tell him about the circumstances surrounding the kidnapping would help, especially if she had any understanding of why they had been targeted. Jane had been thinking about nothing else. ‘I think we were scouted,’ she replied. ‘There were
many
people in the valley at that time, but the militants didn’t want the American women, the Japanese man or some of the other nationalities we passed – they were going, I think, for American and Brıtish men, and knew where to find them.’ She was convinced now that the kidnappings had nothing to do with their guides, Bashir and Sultan, telling Buchs, ‘They seemed very afraid of both the militants and the police.’

Buchs told Jane he would help her the best he could. He explained that Kashmir was currently under Governor’s Rule, and visiting the current incumbent, retired Indian Army chief General Krishna Rao, would be his first stop. Informing her that there were a dozen officials from the Indian security agencies asking to interview the women, he promised to act as liaison, so as to minimise the number of times they would have to retell their stories. But right now, he said as he got up to leave, his most immediate concern was tracing the family of the other American hostage, John Childs. No one knew anything about him, since he had been travelling alone and his passport was with the kidnappers. Throughout their meeting Buchs seemed nervous, Jane thought, and to be playing things by ear. But who else could she place her faith in?