aab e hayat ( English version)

chapter no 40

The man had been standing in front of the portrait of the girl on the wall for the past fifteen minutes. Without blinking, he stared at her face, searching for any resemblance, trying to trace the beginnings of a dormant volcano in Salar Sikandar's family tree.

 If he could target this person, it could only be from this point. He was muttering something under his breath while biting his lip—self-talk, weaving the web of a scandal, hiding facts with a series of deceit and trickery. He took a deep breath and turned to give instructions to the people behind him. 

The walls of the CIA headquarters room were covered with boards, notes, photographs, and sticky notes containing addresses. Three of the few men present in the room were busy examining data on their computers—a task they had been working on for the past month and a half.

 Large boxes were scattered around the room, filled with various files, tapes, magazine clippings, and other records. The cabinets in the room were already full, and all the data was stored on the hard drives of the computers as well. 

Two men had been gathering all the information available online about Salar Sikandar for the last one and a half months. The third man was scanning through the emails of Salar and every member of his family. The fourth man was checking their financial information. 

The result of all this hard work was reflected on the boards in the form of photographs and the family tree. They could claim that if God had a record of Salar and his family's entire life, then a copy of it was in that room too. 

There was nothing in Salar's life that they did not know or could not provide evidence for. From CIA sting operations to his teenage girlfriend, from his financial matters to his children's personal and private lives—they had details of everything. But the issue was that after one and a half months of effort and all the data gathered from around the world, they still couldn't find anything that would allow them to tarnish his character

. The team, which had been working on such missions for fifteen years, was experiencing for the first time that, despite such intense effort, they couldn't find a single scandal involving Salar or anyone in his family.

 The two-hundred-point checklist they had been given was full of crosses, and this was the first time in their careers that they had encountered such a clean record. They had never seen anyone with such a spotless record. Despite some sense of admiration, they made one last attempt... one last effort.

 Walking from one board to another and then to the third board, the man stopped in front of the family tree image of Salar. There were some more pictures in front of that image, along with a few bullet points. Suddenly, it was as if a jolt of electricity ran through him. 

He saw the girl's date of birth under her picture and then turned to the man sitting at the computer. He gave him the year and said, 'Check where he was on these dates.' After a few minutes, the man at the computer, reading the text appearing on the screen, said, 'Pakistan!' A smile spread across the questioner's lips. 

'From when to when?' The man asked his next question, and the person at the computer, typing on the keyboard, gave him the dates. 'Finally, we've found something,' the man said, whistling. They had found the torpedo to sink the ship. This was the story from fifteen minutes ago. Fifteen minutes later, he knew what he needed to do to open this dormant volcano.

Jibreel had woken up startled by the sound of the phone. His first thought was about the hospital, but the call wasn't from the hospital. It had Nisaa's name flashing on it. This was unexpected.

 A week earlier, he had met Nisaa for the first time in a long while at Asfand's funeral, and now, this late-night call... Upon answering, she had apologized for disturbing him at this hour and, in a state of great distress, asked, 'Can you do something for Ayesha?' Jibreel was a bit confused.