Operation Chaos: A Gripping Action Thriller (11 page)

''I can't think of any other place that fits the description better. If this engraving is supposed to lead us somewhere, then Nalanda would be our best shot,'' Shonali explained.

David dedicated the next sixty seconds in making arrangements for their transport. About fifteen minutes later, two HAL Dhruv choppers lowered on a clearing near the Qutub Complex.

David, Shonali, Raghav and Sameer got into one while David's team of commandos got into another. Just as both the choppers were about to take off, David received a text.

Incoming message: Ranjeet

Your job description was quite amusing. Looks like my kind of thing. Almost reached the Qutub Complex. Where are you, Sir?

David chuckled and asked the pilot to hold the chopper down for some more time.

''We have got one more passenger aboard,'' he said.

Chapter 31

Lalit searched the room of Hotel Sundial where their prime suspect had been staying.
That bastard has cleared everything neatly. No computer hard drives, no cell phones, no evidence. All I end up is with some half-burnt papers in the dustbin.

He began pulling out the burnt papers from the dustbin searching for anything legible. Most of the papers were totally charred while the rest had partial texts making absolutely no sense. A piece of paper which didn't burn up had a description about something called
- ASSIGNMENT  6.00

Lalit read and reread the text. He had no idea what any of that stuff meant.

We need to figure out what they were planning. I hope they track him down soon.

The Yellow line at the New Delhi Metro had a mild crowd that night. Muhammad dumped his gun to dodge the metal detector, took out a stolen 'metro entry card', placed it on the reader and entered the platform lobby. Roshan and his team rushed down the stairs with everyone barking orders at the Metro police in-charge. The station lobby was steadily becoming less crowded. A handful of passengers were down on the platforms waiting for the last metros to take them home. It was then that Alok saw a figure wearing a red jacket coming out of the toilet on the extreme corner of the lobby and heading towards the platforms below.

''There he is, Sir! The red jacket,'' Alok screamed.

Roshan caught a glimpse of the mysterious figure just before it started to climb down the stairs leading to the platforms. For a split second he got a clear view of the face of his target.

''Did you see the scar on his...?'' Alok said turning towards Roshan. 

''Left cheek. Yes, I saw it. Stay right behind me,'' said Roshan, dashing towards the stairs like a bullet.

Muhammad was at the end of the staircase and he had a decision to make- the two trains on his either sides. One heading uptown to Jahangirpuri on his left and the other downtown to Huda City Centre on his right. Losing his heavy backpack and the red jacket, he dashed towards a train and got in.
 

By the time Roshan and Alok descended to the platform, their fugitive was nowhere to be seen. There was nobody else on the platform either. The doors of the trains were about to close and Roshan had a little time to decide. He saw a red jacket and a backpack on the ground near platform one.

He may have dropped it in a hurry to board the train on platform one. OR. It may be a trick to divert us.

''Let's Split.'' Roshan made the call. Giving a slight nod as a reply, Alok dashed towards platform 2 into the Huda city centre Metro while Roshan ran along platform 1 and dived into the Jahangirpuri heading Metro. The doors closed in behind him
.

Roshan radioed Alok the further instructions.

''Now that he doesn't have his red jacket on, it is going to be difficult to find him. You know the procedure. I will inform the operators and tell them not to open the doors until we are done searching. He is in one of these trains and he is trapped. Ask our men to check the contents of his backpack. Keep me posted. Out.''

Alok cleared his throat and flashed his badge.

''Everyone listen up. This is the police and we are doing an investigation. I need your assistance. Do not panic and just do as you are told and it will soon be over.''

On the other train Roshan was also announcing something similar.

''We are searching for a man and he is somewhere on this train. I request you to remain seated and let us proceed with the investigation.''

A couple of minutes later when the trains pulled into their respective stations, there was a metro police squad waiting right outside the trains.

Totally trapped. The bastard is not going anywhere.
Roshan thought.

''Did you get him yet, Alok?'' Roshan asked impatiently over the radio.

''Nope. My checking is not even halfway done. We can't miss him though. Only we both know how he looks like and that scar on his cheek, running from his ear to his chin, is not easy to miss. What's your status?''

Little did Roshan and Alok know that they were not going to find their target in either of the trains.

Chapter 32

Within no time, Ranjeet was escorted by two NSG guards to the chopper. As opposed to the other geeks he usually hung around with, Ranjeet did care about his attire. He was dressed in a black jacket over a grey t-shirt, wide-wale corduroys, and grey sports shoes. The rimless spectacles and his laptop backpack were in line with his geeky side, but did present him as a guy with etiquette. As soon he got on board, for the first few seconds, his eyes were locked on the beautiful girl in the chopper- Shonali. It required a tap on the shoulder from David to bring back Ranjeet's mind to the reality.

''This is Ranjeet. He helps us with ethical hacking.'' David then introduced his team to the hacker. ''Captain Raghav- Deputy Security incharge at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, Sameer- our crypto analyst. That is President Ajaysingh's daughter- Shonali.''

Someone tell her she is damn hot.
Ranjeet shook hands with the team.

''So what's this about, Sir? Shouldn't you be at the Rashtrapati Bhawan. I just checked out the news on the net,'' Ranjeet asked, secretly glancing at Shonali between words.

''It is a long story....''

David began explaining things to Ranjeet as the chopper rose rather unsteadily facing the tall stone monument. Shonali decided to spark up a conversation with Sameer, still eyeing the message on the iron pillar she had decrypted.

''I always had an interest in cryptography and the codes. I am curious to know how exactly did you know that it was an Ottendorf cipher?'' she asked.

''It's a common cipher. Perhaps one of the easiest to crack. Even in the 1993 Mumbai bombings, the local gangs used a type of Ottendorf cipher. They had to deliver the RDX to specific locations so they chose a book and used an Ottendorf cipher such as 45-6-3 referring to the page number, the line number and the word.''

''And they passed the book along with the code?''

''NO. You never keep the lock and the key together. Every code basically has two parts- one is the cipher and another is the key. The book, in this case, being the key. The key must be easy to obtain, yet hard to identify. So they chose a pretty common book, but only the users of the code knew which book exactly it was. In 1993, since they had to cipher the addresses they used the Mumbai telephone directory. Choosing a location to deliver the explosives from the telephone directory, they used to send the coded numbers to their contemporaries.''

An expression of awe appeared on Shonali's face. ''Oh! So when did you become interested in cryptography?''

''I have been excited about codes since my school days. I used to send coded messages to my school time girlfriend,'' Sameer winked sheepishly. ''You know, cryptography- the science of making and breaking codes has come a long way since the 1st century B.C, when Julius Caesar reportedly used a simple substitution cipher, in which each letter was replaced by a letter that followed it alphabetically by three places. Another cipher found in The Old Testament also uses simple substitution. In Jeremiah (25:26 and 51:41), the prophet wrote wrote
She-shach
for Babel. The second letter of the Hebrew alphabet (
B
) was replaced by the second-to-last letter (
Sh
), and the twelfth letter (
L
) was replaced by the twelfth-to-last letter (
ch
). The vowels are of secondary importance in Hebrew. This cipher is called Athbash, an acronym formed from the first Hebrew letter (a), the last letter (th), the second letter (b), and the second-to-last letter (sh).''

''Wow. I didn't know that there were codes even in The Old Testament. How do you decode these ciphers? The substitutions could be anything,'' Shonali asked.

''Um... there's one loophole in this method. In every language, the letters of a lengthy plaintext exhibit a predictable frequency. For example, E is the most common letter in English, showing up an eighth of the time. It is a good assumption that the most common symbol of a long ciphertext represents the letter E. The letters t, a, o, n, i, r, s and h follow 'e' in the frequency count. This helps crypto analysts to decipher almost 70 percent of the cipher. Many modern code-cracking algorithms use this technique of frequency analysis. Another point of interest would be that almost 40% of the English words start with t, a, o, s and w. These codes were used more often than weapons during wars. You may be surprised to hear that in World War I, the Germans transmitted two million enciphered words a month on the radio while in World War II, the Allied Supreme Headquarters often sent out more than two million enciphered words per day.''

''My God! Do you guys still use these kind of ciphers?'' asked Shonali, digesting all the information Sameer was throwing at her.

''No way. Today's state of the art technologies and advanced algorithms crack these codes in a matter of seconds. The world of cryptography has totally changed. Even the United States' best crypto analysts couldn't figure out the cipher designed by Bin Laden. Although there are still some old time ciphers which work well on a small scale. In the fifteenth century, an Italian architect Leon Battista Alberti came up with a cipher- polyalphabetic cipher. That can be called the basis of modern cryptography,'' said Sameer.

''And what was it?'' Shonali was now more interested in the science of codes.

Sameer took out his laptop and opened a diagram on it.

''Alberti's cipher uses this table for encryption and decryption of messages. The uppercase letters in the table are known as key letters and to the left are also uppercase letters which refer to the plaintext.''

''So suppose we choose the keyword as 'shonali' and we have to send a message- 'Bombs Delivery Done', we do this:

Keyword  :          S H O N A L  I S H O N A L I  S  H  O 

Plain Text :         B O M B S D E L I  V E R Y D O N E

Now to design the cipher text, we take the alphabet which lies in the column of S in the Key Letters and the row of B in the Plain text. When we go down the column beginning with 'S' and the row starting with 'B', they intersect at 'U'. So doing the same thing we the entire message, it gets encrypted to:

Keyword     :         S  H  O   N   A   L   I   S   H   O   N   A   L  I  S  H O  

Plain Text    :         B  O  M  B    S   D  E   L   I    V    E    R  Y D O N E