The silence in the Corps Commanders' Conference Room was not the respectful silence of subordinates waiting for orders. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of a boardroom that had decided the CEO was becoming a liability.
I sat at the head of the long oak table. To my left was General Aziz (Chief of General Staff). To my right, General Mahmood (ISI Chief). Around the table sat the "Ten Corps"—the men who owned Pakistan.
Usually, they looked at me with camaraderie. Today, they looked at me like I was a tax auditor who had just walked into a money laundering front.
"Sir," General Mahmood broke the silence. His voice was smooth, cold, and dangerous. "There is unrest in the barracks."
"Unrest?" I feigned ignorance, opening a file. "Because of the sugar raids? Or because I invited a cricketer to dinner?"
"Because you are breaking the chain of command," Mahmood said, not blinking. "Not the military chain. The social one."
He slid a paper across the table. It wasn't an intelligence report. It was a list of names.
"Major General (Retd) Farooq. His brother owns the flour mill you raided yesterday in Multan. Brigadier (Retd) Salik. His son-in-law is the Secretary of the Transport Union you humiliated on the GT Road. Colonel (Retd) Hameed. He sits on the board of the sugar mill you seized."
Mahmood leaned back. "Sir, Pakistan is not a country of individuals. It is a web of tribes. Every General has a brother in the bureaucracy. Every Bureaucrat has a cousin in politics. Every Politician has a nephew in the media or the madrassa."
I looked at the list. It was a genealogy of corruption.
"We run this country like a company, Sir," Mahmood said, his voice lowering to a whisper that sounded like a hiss. "A very profitable company. And a good company squeezes its workers, it controls the market, and it maintains a monopoly."
"And the enemy?" I asked, knowing the answer.
"The enemy is the marketing strategy," Aziz chimed in. "India sells us fear. We sell the people protection. That is the business model. If you make peace with India... if you use Imran Khan to tell people that 'corruption' is the enemy instead of 'New Delhi'... then you are bankrupting the firm."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. Aditya Kaul, the civil servant, was used to corruption being a bug in the system. Something you fixed with an inquiry.
But here? Corruption wasn't a bug. It was the operating system.
"So," I said, closing the file. "You want me to stop?"
"We want you to remember who put you in that chair," Mahmood said softly. "The boys don't mind you playing the hero. But don't arrest the family."
The Discovery Chief Executive's Secretariat 14:00 Hours (2:00 PM)
I stormed into my office, my head throbbing. The "Company" wanted me to back off. They wanted me to be a puppet dictator—wear the uniform, make angry speeches about Kashmir, and let the boys loot the treasury in peace.
"Brigadier Tariq!" I shouted.
Tariq ran in. "Sir?"
"I need a win," I said, pacing the room. "The Generals are squeezing me. I need to show them that I don't need their 'Family Network' to run logistics. I need to break the Transport Mafia completely."
I walked to the map. "The Railway maneuver was a success. But the trains can't go everywhere. We need trucks. State-owned trucks. Trucks that don't belong to the private mafia."