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Most of the action takes place at the Avicenna University Hospital where the teacher-student duo of Dr Asad Mirza and Nadia Khan, the latter quite smitten by the intellectual charm of the former, are jostling with a mysterious encephalitis-type disease, with additional symptoms of rabies, which has claimed three lives. Elsewhere, running parallel is a ‘network’, whose un-named top operative works in close co-ordination with Malik Feysal to actualise the organisation’s dastardly machinations. When other plans fail to produce the desired results, they take the biological route through the indoctrination of a scientist, Hamza Qadri, who suffers from an obsessive-compulsive disorder. It does not prevent him from manufacturing a deadly bio-terror agent though, which is capable of widespread destruction. Malik becomes the mastermind behind all that follows. The dummy tests are conducted on two innocent people in Karachi, and one ‘not-so-innocent’ Baba Sikander contracts it from the bite of a woman, Ayesha Anjum, who does so in a bid to protect herself after realising that she was being raped by the ‘faith-healer’ in a semi-unconscious state. Before dying the very next moment, she passes on the deadly disease to the charlatan baba, which comes across as retribution of sorts. Later, the secret autopsy of the baba’s brain provides an important clue in the scheme of things. The ruse becomes clear to Asad through the crucial information provided by former military intelligence man who works as a detective, Col Nabeel Mustafa. Asad seeks his help after surviving a gruesome assassination bid on him by Malik. The narrative travels to Boston with Nadia, to Asad’s friends Sara and Joel Hartman and so does the denouement. The anti-American sentiment, post the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York, is palpable right through. However, the message is that terror is never a solution; mutual dialogue is. As expected, Shafqat, a neurologist by profession, has dealt with the medical aspects in the story with razor-sharp precision. His clinical language – both tactically and syntactically – is the perfect appurtenance to the otherwise well-etched plot and brilliant characterisation. Intense…is surely the word.
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