A Game of Hope

(Part-II of Angels Who Cry)

The horizon is always rosy at dawn and dusk. A lamp burns at its brightest just as it’s lit and just before it goes out. What can you offer a lamp that hasn’t been lit or that has gone out? What can you offer a man trapped in darkness, left with no hope?

The cell he was in looked forbidding. He was in the enemy’s lair, deep within the bowels of the enemy fortress where there was absolutely no hope. He knew his friends wouldn’t come for him, there was no contest about it. The best he could hope was, his body feeling some fresh air out in the open than the stale air of these endless labyrinths. After what felt like endless centuries trapped in those passages along with his tormenters who always were innovative about methods of torture to make him spill his friends secrets, he was pleasantly surprised to see his friends walk up to him one day. He was trying to lose himself in his nightmares before the real one began again, only to be rudely awoken by a loud noise. It then turned to music as his friends and allies trooped in only to see him and lead him to freedom from the jaws of the enemy. His silence earned him respect, medals and a rank.

A decade later and at a highly respected position he received a piece of news that shattered his world. His son, one whom he loved from the moment he opened his eyes to the moment the enemy closed them would no longer stand by his side but rather rest to eternity in the warm earth, enclosed by the cold embrace of death. He used every piece of influence and fury he had in him to find out the reason as to how his dear little one had passed on. The answer was simple, there was a traitor in the midst. The traitor then paid the price for his betrayal but since left him with a very bad taste for traitors and a very strong sense of duty towards weeding them out. That zeal is what made him opt for his current job and what made him a ruthless expert in it.

He prided himself on his ability to pick out traitors and do what was needed to get what they wanted to know about the enemy and to plug the gaps they might have created in his army’s amour. As he walked, every once a while to that room that was kept pristine until his arrival, he would hold his head high and walk with pride. Once inside, his demeanor changed. From a proud soldier, he transformed into a a soulless, heartless and a ruthless interrogator who stopped at nothing. People who knew his reputation trembled just from the mention of his name and the fact that he was interrogating them. And as a professional responsibility he took care that almost everyone in his army knew his name.

This time it was a sniper, someone who was trusted to watch over his fellow buddies and warn them in advance was accused of shooting his troops and causing losses. The others in his battalion suspected that he was passing information to the enemy and then shooting the respective people in a specific area allowing the enemy to make advances. This was a serious problem and he was here to solve that.

The soldiers in the room was normal looking. He apparently had a family and yet he seemed to have betrayed his country. This was something he never understood. A man either stood for principles or for his family or at least for himself. This one fell in the middle category and yet he seemed to support the enemy, knowing the atrocities he was committing. This worried him. He concluded that this man was someone who had lost hope. He didn’t trust that his own comrades could win the war and therefore had succumbed to the enemy to try and gain asylum for his family and himself. He never thought about what would happen if he got caught. Disgusting brat he was. Walking into the room he saw the confusion in his eyes that he classified as feigned, but the terror, once he realized who was interrogating him was real. The start that he displayed when he asked questions was real but the answers he were giving were lies. He was telling me that he hadn’t colluded with the enemy and that he in fact didn’t know about what he was being interrogated. He heaved a sigh of exasperation at the lies everyone told at the start.  He asked him nicely one more time. Then he began what he did best.

After four grueling hours he came back to a small room he formally called office, disturbed. He hadn’t seen a case like this. The man was put through everything he knew. By the time he was done with him even he wasn’t sure if the man he had interrogated would survive or not. The thing that nagged him was that he stuck to his story. There wasn’t an instance anyone had ever done that. He had broken the best of soldiers, people so highly trained that they were touted as unbreakable. Even they sang like canaries in a coal mine after two hours with him. This man however hadn’t changed his version. He was pretty sure he wasn’t highly trained and that left just one horrifying thought. He was actually innocent and that the actual traitor has him captured to have a bit more free reign for a little longer. However another logical conclusion from this was, the spy was playing a dangerous game. He knew he’d be found out, the fact that he was risking discovery by using such a tactic only spelt that he was delaying for time. Time that he had unwittingly granted.

He had tortured a man who was probably innocent, granted and enemy time to do exactly as he wanted and had now grown a conscience who didn’t feel like leaving him alone for the near future. Who was the real traitor, what could he do with this innocent man and what would be the fate of the plan they were devising. Too many questions and no answers. Thinking of all this he loaded the man who had come into interrogation onto an ambulance. Looking at his form he felt a sense of responsibility and got into the ambulance. It was a whim, a fancy. The ambulance pulled away from his building and was checking out when a gigantic explosion took out the building behind him. All hope seemed lost but the enemy had moved the first pawn in a long game of speed chess.