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Desert Hunt desert Hunt, a new thriller written by an Indian expatriate journalist in Dubai, is a novel that Pakistan would love to hate. In a well-crafted narration in 241 pages, the author KSR Menon, a news agency journalist who has lived in Dubai for 18 years, tells the story of Al-Qaida trying to secure a suitcase nuclear bomb design from a discredited Pakistani intelligence agent. Despite the disclaimer given in the beginning of the novel, it is evident from the beginning that the author is taking pot shots at the Pakistani government, the ISI and also the Pakistani nuclear establishment.
For a reader who is familiar with the current geo-political situation in the region, the similarity between PSI and the ISI, Dr Rukman Haq and A Q Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb and several other characters and events are hard to miss. Menon has adopted a racy style to tell the story. To make for easy reading, he split each of the 20 chapters into short subsections which would prompt the reader to finish just one section more to get over the suspense. He has woven the plot through different countries—India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel and Dubai. The book is well researched, as it traces the history of Pakistan’s nuclear establishment, India’s strategic initiatives in Afghanistan, the UAE’s policy toward Pakistan and Taliban and a host of other issues. On several counts though, the author seems to have deliberately misrepresented the factual situation just that bit so as to justify the disclaimer given in the beginning. The book will certainly find favour with thousands of expatriates in the Gulf or those who have been to the Middle East but it is anybody’s guess how the authorities in the UAE will receive it. The establishments of the Arabian Gulf countries have been too sensitive to any negative comment on the domestic scene there. And Desert Hunt does have many subtle and humorously critical references to the life in the UAE, which may not be taken kindly by the regime there though the overall treatment of terrorism in the story shows the Gulf country in a positive light.
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The novel begins dramatically with the assassination of top Hamas commander in Dubai by Israel’s Mossad, an event that actually did happen a couple of years ago. The author uses it as a story peg to develop the theme of Al-Qaida-LeT collaboration over the nuke design. To add spice to the story, he introduces a top Al-Qaida leader hiding in Waziristan seeking treatment in Dubai for wounds inflicted by a US drone strike. The terrorist leader’s other objective is to take the nuke design with him. Will he succeed? Thereby hangs a tale. 