Next round was to Merzie

How many kinds of British intelligence existed in the world?

In the 1980s, the Balkans got to decide on the number.

If it noticed a group moving towards the lease or the currency or the Treasury, it would call out, "That's no British group".

For the above, the Balkans spent the next decade in violent civil war, living amidst NATO bombing. That was the 1990s, first Bosnia, then Kosovo. 

No one spoke up for the Balkans, why it was being punished. For in Paris, the intellectuals knew who the Balkans had identified as fraud British intelligence, and that information had come from within the Pentagon. The 1990s turned out to be a brilliant decade, no one would forget those glory days of the US economy.

The lease family was apparently to blame for that glory ending with the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Hence the US agencies agreed to sit and watch Antara being degraded, humiliated and tortured for a decade by the Indians. "Raising two girls on so little, obviously both would hanker to marry just about anyone," Delhi officials had declared to their US counterparts.

Even in 2025, it was the official Indian line about Antara's torture and unemployment: "Should have just thrown some money at her face, none of this would have happened."

ii. Antara was not as disconsolate about her marriage as Indian officials were making it out to be. No one from her household leant on the White House in DC for obvious support. 

It meant when Austria formally protested to the White House in DC that Chancellor Merz was the real AfD and the party called AfD was controlling the Merz Govt, when Austria accused the Bidens of planning such a political disaster, Antara's household could sit at the sidelines and watch the entire show, neither with Germany nor with Austria nor with the White House nor with the Bidens.

iii. Why was the above so important? Because the next round of puzzle-solving would not lead to any UPI or online shopping. The next round of puzzle-solving was about that blind alley at Rashmela in Purulia, the one that led to the house where Antara's paternal grandparents had once stayed, the alleyway that Antara's parents feared to enter.

The next round was pure gamble, you might win some, you may lose all. 

The next round was desperate US intelligence officials seeking out disenchanted European royals with tons of gossip.

Antara remembered the smell from walking down that alleyway, sticky molasses being churned with tobacco to create a paste, used both as an addictive and to clean the teeth. "If you kept it smeared on your teeth, it killed the appetite as well," local women said, especially those low on finances.

Down that alleyway was the house where a small boy (not Antara's paternal grandfather) once had a sordid encounter with the Grand Mufti al-Husseini and his family.

June 8, 2025.