About two months before Pakistan's slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was removed from office for the second time in 1996, accused of corruption and misrule, her niece Fatima Bhutto telephoned the prime minister's official residence in Islamabad.
Fatima was desperate - there had been a fierce gun battle near her house in Karachi and her father, Murtaza Bhutto, Benazir's younger brother and vociferous political opponent, was missing.
According to an account Fatima gave later to the London-based Pakistani writer and activist Tariq Ali, the telephone call was taken not by Benazir but by her husband, Asif Ali Zardari.
Relations between the Bhutto siblings were severely strained. The mercurial Murtaza had returned from exile to challenge his sister's leadership of the ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), an organisation created by their father, the hanged former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Their Iranian-born mother Nusrat had switched loyalties, and now openly supported her son against her prime minister daughter. Many party functionaries also seemed to be secretly supporting Murtaza, who was seen as unpredictable but honest.
Benazir's main support in her very public battle with her brother came from Mr Zardari, whose by now legendary venality had made him a prime target for Murtaza. Mr Zardari was popularly known as 'Mr Ten Per Cent', a reference to the kickbacks he allegedly received from government contracts.
This is how Fatima recalled her telephone conversation with her uncle Mr Zardari on that fateful day in September 1996: