The Khan Saima Mir (best short novels TXT) 📖

saying the protection prayers they had learnt in childhood, until they heard his ‘ameen’. They were ready.

Back in the travel agency, Mohammed Akram counted the money carefully, each pile neatly laid out on the table, and growing steadily. Nowak stood back and watched. He could see Akram’s greed growing, and he liked it. It was the travel agent who had approached him to offer his services. He had been removed from the Khan’s inner circle and all because of a small matter. His ego had not recovered, and his izzat was blemished. He swore blind he had thought the girl was older, but the Khan had ignored his pleas. Mohammed Akram was bitter, and angry enough to agree to finance Nowak’s operation and help clean the cash using his transfer contacts. But all of that was an excuse; the truth was, his business was dying, killed by the internet. Even the older generation were getting their kids to buy Umrah and Hajj packages for them online.

The travel agent had long known the havala method would be the perfect way to move black money, and now he would prove it. With no paper trail, and no actual movement of goods, there was no way for the police to prove anything. He had tried to explain the system to Nowak when they had met the year before. ‘We use my havaladar in Rawalpindi. He is a trustworthy man. He inherited the broker job from his family, and they’ve been doing this for generations. You give me the money to be transferred to his country. I contact him by phone and ask him to pass on an equivalent sum of money to your man in Pakistan. Your man can then transfer it to the Isle of Man. We move thousands of pounds in a matter of minutes, with no questions asked and no record of any kind. Between us – the brokers in Rawalpindi and myself – we balance our books through a reverse transaction…when someone on his side wants to send money here. But, and this is the clever part, because the system is based on our long-standing relationship and trust among the havaladar, there is no need to balance accounts at the end of the day, or even at the end of each month. We don’t keep records for long and it’s all perfectly legal.’

‘What does that mean to me?’ Nowak had asked.

‘It means that the transactions are difficult to track,’ Akram had said. ‘It means we balance our books on both sides and no one ever really knows what money is where or how it got there. It means your money gets to your tax haven safely.’

Nowak was sold. It sounded complicated and risky, but he’d liked that.

As Akram counted the cash and calculated his share, he was thinking all the while about ‘the great Akbar Khan’ and what a shame it was that he hadn’t lived to witness his rise and Jia Khan’s failed attempts to take the city. He had once craved the Khan’s respect – what a fool he had been. He looked at Nowak. The man was ambitious but impatient. He was here for the game and the money but not for the people. It would be a shame to see him take over Yorkshire operations, but not that much of a shame. Akram carried on counting. A loud noise made him glance up at the CCTV screen across the room.

He watched as Nowak sprang into action, moving quickly towards the doorway to see what was happening outside. The sounds of the riot hit before the CCTV images registered what was going on. Loud and angry, it was hulking closer.

Nowak came back shouting at his men in his mother tongue. ‘Let’s go! Now! Put the cash back in the bags! Move, move, MOVE!’ They dropped the bags on the floor and began sweeping the cash into them. Nowak looked afraid, almost as if he knew what was to come.

Razi Khan watched the violence unfold as he stood outside the travel agency, his brother beside him. They waited in silence, their holdall bags in their hands, as Asian men swarmed up the street. Row upon row of faces advanced, hidden under scarves or cloaked with hoods, filling the usually quiet street with the roar of angry men. Police vehicles were parked bumper to bumper across the road, closing it and signalling where the stand-off would be. The officers remained ready behind sheets of riot gear.

As the roar grew louder Raza flinched, but Razi Khan put his hand on his brother’s shoulder to calm him. They had come too far to lose their nerve. The crowd surged ahead of them and stopped, unable to move past the police and unwilling to move back. Pushing the men aside like a Spartan on a battlefield, Razi Khan moved to the middle of the crowd. He looked around at the men and waited. He placed his gym bag on the ground next to him, then dropped to his knees as if tying his shoelaces. Once there, he unzipped the bag and pulled it wide open. On the other side of the road, his brother had done exactly the same. Their eyes met and they calmly walked away, moving seamlessly back through the crowd.

Idris tried to push open the trapdoor, but it felt jammed, as if something heavy was on it. He turned to look at Jia. ‘It’s a rug. Push harder and it will budge,’ she said. Idris did as she asked, using his shoulder to force the door up – she was right. When he managed to wedge it up, he could see the rug hanging over its edge. He pushed it aside and climbed out into the light. He squinted through his mask, his eyes reacclimatising, before reaching down and helping Jia up. Nadeem and Malik followed. Jia put her finger to her lips and they listened. To the backdrop of the angry crowd in the street outside, came