The Siege: 68 Hours Inside the Taj Hotel (12 page)

Headley touched down in Mumbai in early April 2008 and on his first night boarded a tourist boat in front of the Taj, taking a round trip to the Elephanta Caves on the far side of the harbour. The quayside was brightly lit and crawling with tourists, security guards and police. No one took any notice of him as he photographed and took GPS readings.

The following day he took another boat, this time leaving from Marine Drive at 8.30 p.m., forewarned by Qahafa the Bull that this might be the time the attackers would land. It was frantically busy. The next day he took a taxi down to Cuffe Parade, sticking to the coastline until he reached Badhwar Park. Chatting to a boatman, Headley persuaded him to take him out at 3 a.m. the next morning. They went almost three miles to sea. Before returning, Headley noted that the landing point was, as promised, dark and chaotic, sheltered from the main road. He returned the next day, spinning the fisherman a line about ‘college students [who] would contact him for a boat ride soon’.

Headley flew back to Pakistan, driving five hours to the military cantonment of Rawalpindi to deliver the GPS coordinates for the landing site to Sajid Mir. When he arrived, he was shocked. Lashkar’s deputy head of foreign operations had undergone plastic surgery in Dubai, although to Headley’s eyes Mir still looked like Mir, ‘perhaps slightly Chinese’. If Mir was preparing to vanish, Operation Bombay was surely now a certainty.

A CCTV photograph of David Headley in the immigration queue at Mumbai’s airport on 1 July 2008 revealed an exhausted-looking traveller, his pale blue polo shirt stretched and faded, a turquoise baseball cap covering a greasy ponytail. His carry-on bag hung
heavy on his left shoulder and contained the cameras he would use on what Lashkar had advised him was his last surveillance mission.

As well as scouting out the Taj, the Trident-Oberoi and CST, Headley began documenting a late addition to the target list: Chabad House. The Jewish welfare centre, which was located in a densely populated Colaba side street, was staffed by an American rabbi and reached out to Israelis who worked or holidayed in India, many of them fresh from military service. The suggestion to attack it had come from a team of sixteen Indians whom Lashkar had recruited in Mumbai to produce lists of potential targets. A disparate squad, in Muridke they were referred to as
chohay
(’the Mice’).

This target was an example of the tough backroom deals being struck to keep Lashkar together. The old guard wanted to rule out Chabad House as it strayed too far from the outfit’s brief and attacking it would result in Lashkar becoming a global pariah; the hardcore, pro-Al-Qaeda lobby, who had the upper hand and even the ear of
chacha
Zaki, now pushed Jewish targets as Lashkar’s ‘new direction’.

When Headley returned to Lahore, Mir called him to the House of the Holy Warriors right away. Headley had barely slept, and by the time he arrived at the camp, clutching a sweaty chit stamped with Lashkar’s double scimitars over a burning sun, he was ragged. The emotional toll of his mother’s death, coupled with the energy he had exerted in maintaining dual lives, was draining him. Wearily, he delivered the GPS waypoints for the new targets, accompanied by hours of video footage and annotated maps, the data overlaid on the ever-growing schematic of the Taj and its environs. That night Headley collapsed, sick with fever. When he woke the next day, he found Mir at his bedside, confiding that Operation Bombay was about to be discussed at a special planning session organized by the outfit’s
sura
, its ruling council.

Headley readied himself to enter the outfit’s core. But Mir was grim-faced. Although
amir
Hafiz Saeed,
chacha
Zaki, Qahafa the Bull and other senior figures would be attending the
sura
, Headley was not invited. Mir made some excuse about not wanting to expose him before new faces.

What he could not say was that at an earlier caucus
chacha
Zaki had revealed that Major Iqbal had sent warning that the ISI believed Headley to be ‘playing them all’. They still needed him for Operation Bombay to succeed and they were in a quandary. Zaki had proposed: ‘Keep him at arm’s length and let the operation run.’ If Headley was betraying them to the CIA or another Western agency, they could still use him. Zaki believed that whoever was handling Headley in the West was so greedy for information that they would leave him in play up until the last minute, which would give Lashkar the leeway to launch. ‘Just keep him away from the
sura
,’ Zaki said. ‘And we must hold back the date.’

After the conclave, Mir came to find Headley, and managed to cajole him into going back down the hill with one juicy titbit. The attack team had already been recruited and Operation Bombay was now officially a
fidayeen
mission. The
mujahideen
they had selected would seize targets in the city, taking hostages and extracting live media time, before executing their captives. Then they would set fire to Mumbai’s most famous landmarks, and martyr themselves in a spectacular final shootout.

3.

Salaam Alaikum

Wednesday, 26 November 2008, 6 p.m.

A bronzed Andreas Liveras, his silver hair swept back, his linen shirt open at the neck, stood on the sun deck of his super-yacht
Alysia
and contemplated the sea-stippled Taj. He had just returned from an afternoon’s shopping in Chor Bazaar, Mumbai’s famous thieves’ market, accompanied by his good-natured Indian cruise director, Remesh Cheruvoth, who managed his fleet and also carried his bags, bulging with carvings and papier-mâché. Andreas had last visited this city with his wife, Anna, going to the Taj for ‘a memorable curry’ in Masala Kraft. A few months ago an aggressive cancer had killed her, and tonight Andreas, seventy-three, intended to return to the hotel, in memory of Anna, in search of ‘another famous curry’ and to get away from the boat.

His British friend and yacht broker Nick Edmiston was borrowing the
Alysia
for the launch of a new Indian venture: his first foray into yacht sales and charters in the subcontinent. Andreas was not in the mood for socializing, which was unusual for him. A rambunctious Greek Cypriot exile, he normally loved to brag of the
Alysia
’s luxurious dimensions: an imposing 280-foot hull, with eighteen state rooms, eighteen suites, a jacuzzi, a helicopter landing pad and a temperature-controlled wine cellar. It took a team of liveried crew to get it sailing. ‘I’m the king of yachting,’ he told people, explaining his simple formula: ‘The bigger the boat, the more expensive, the busier [we] are.’ Built in 2006 at a cost of £70m, the
Alysia
was listed by
Forbes Magazine
that year as the most expensive ever and it had represented a high-water mark in Andreas’s mercantile life.

One of nine children born to impoverished Cypriot farmers, in the sixties he had migrated to London, where he had started as a baker’s delivery boy in upmarket Kensington, West London, before building up the hugely profitable Fleur de Lys patisserie and catering chain. After selling the business for £130m, Andreas, in his rose pink suit and thick gold chain, embraced the high life, buying jets and luxury homes all over the world, including Monaco, where he befriended Prince Albert and became a member of the Royal Yacht Club, through which he met Nick Edmiston, another Monaco exile from London.

Andreas and Nick had bonded on a ten-day retreat to the Meteora monasteries in Greece, a backdrop to the James Bond movie
For Your Eyes Only
, both of them sharing a passion for super-yachts, and making good money from private charters. The
Alysia
cost £500,000 a week to hire; Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United striker, was one of Andreas’s most recent customers, celebrating his wedding to Coleen on board in June, while it was anchored on the Italian Riviera. But Andreas never forgot his humble beginnings and all those who worked on the
Alysia
, Remesh especially, thought of him as an attentive, generous boss.

To get his Indian venture started, Nick had hired the socialite and entrepreneur Ratan Kapoor, a Delhi-wallah from an affluent family of carpet traders, whose winning pitch had been that when there was blood on the floor, Indians started spending. ‘Appearance is everything,’ Kapoor had told him, when they met earlier in the year, as Nick and Andreas’s London- and Monaco-based yacht businesses were lashed by the global financial crisis.

Kapoor had cut his teeth tempting Irish investors to the subcontinent before the Celtic Tiger became extinct, and he gave Nick a crash course in the city’s elite, pointing out the most significant mansions. ‘If the most important six couples in Mumbai get interested, then the whole city will follow,’ Kapoor promised. He had had to work harder on Andreas, who disliked his constant bragging and sent a string of characteristically direct emails: ‘I don’t want street people on the boat.’ Put out, Kapoor had mailed right back: ‘I don’t
know
any street people.’ He had reeled off the list of ‘Ultras’ who
had already bought into the yachting life, including Vijay Mallya, the Kingfisher beer and aviation tycoon, who owned the boat that Richard Burton had given as a present to Elizabeth Taylor in 1967 when she won an Oscar for
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Kapoor’s idea was a simple one: the
Alysia
was a glamorous advertising hoarding anchored off the Taj. It would also provide the backdrop for a series of exclusive functions. There had already been a press lunch for magazine editors, hosted by Indian
Vogue
, and tonight Ratan and Nick would throw a lavish dinner sponsored by Moët & Chandon. The sister-in-law of the Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan was hosting tomorrow’s ‘ladies’ lunch’, while on Friday night the megastar Shah Rukh Khan had agreed to show his face, which would lure hundreds on board.

There had been a few last-minute snags. The
Alysia
had turned up late, dropping anchor 500 metres from the Taj just two hours before the lunch started. Almost immediately a flotilla of Indian officials had streamed on board. Despite filling in every form, paying bribes to the police, the navy and the port authorities, Kapoor was still worried. The anchorage limit of 100 guests would be well exceeded and, since they were in a navy-controlled waterway, severe restrictions on music and the consumption of alcohol would also be disregarded. When Commissioner Gafoor, the city’s police chief, finally accepted an invitation, everyone breathed easier.

Now, as the crew changed into red T-shirts printed with the Edmiston logo, Andreas took Nick to one side. ‘It’s your boat tonight,’ he said to his friend. ‘I’m going to grab a quick curry at the Taj and then I’ll be back.’ At 7.30 p.m., he set out in the
Alysia’s
tender for the Gateway of India slip, accompanied by Remesh and two Filipino girls who ran the on-board spa. A queue of lacquered Mumbai ‘Ultras’ chugged in the opposite direction, ferried to the
Alysia
, where foie gras was on the menu. ‘This is going to be some party,’ Nick said to his son Woody. ‘The boat looks great. The location is wonderful.’ The notoriously volatile Arabian Sea was calm and the Taj was bathed in a golden light.

*

Line Kristin Woldbeck, a Norwegian marketing executive and seasoned traveller, looked at her watch. It was 7.45 p.m. and she and her boyfriend, Arne Strømme, were stuck in traffic, creeping along Marine Drive towards Colaba. She tried to block out the racket by staring out to sea. They had flown in from Gujarat for just one night to meet up with a new Facebook buddy Meetu Asrani, a 26-year-old Mumbaiker. For Line it was their last stop on a month-long spiritual journey and Meetu was coming into the city centre specially to see her, meeting them at the Leopold Café, a stroll away from the Taj.

But three lanes were now six, the cars so close together that they were grinding the paint off each other’s doors. Line’s phone whirred. It was Meetu. ‘Sorry, hun. I’m 45 mins late.’ She was caught in the same traffic jam, heading in from the north-western suburbs. ‘See you at Leo’s, mwah.’ Line panicked. In the morning she and Arne had to catch a flight to Delhi to make their connection back home. If they did not make this rendezvous, she would never get to see Meetu.

When they finally reached the café shortly before 9 p.m., it was buzzing. Red-shirted waiters bustled about and Line recognized Meetu from her Facebook profile. Excited, they found a table for three near the far wall, Meetu telling Line that she had just landed her first Bollywood job, as a creative director for Balaji Telefilms, the most prolific TV hit factory in South Asia. She would be working on a TV soap opera that had just been named ‘show of the year’. She also showed Line photos of a wedding she had attended a few days back. ‘Look,’ she said, laughing. ‘My first sari ever.’ They stared at each other. Line was dressed in a loose
shalwar kameez.
Meetu was wearing skin-tight jeans and T-shirt. Laughing at each other, they felt like old friends. When the waiter came over at last, Line took charge. ‘Let’s order pasta and bruschetta,’ she said.

Outside, the traffic was thick and the air was filled with the noise of hawkers. Sachin Sorte, a security guard manning the doorway of the Benetton store opposite, was watching the crowds of tourists glide by when he caught sight of two young men in their early
twenties emerging from a yellow cab, weighed down by bulging rucksacks, as if they had come back from college. He had just logged the time, 9.43 p.m. precisely, in a small exercise book. They looked like clean-cut local kids, the kind who grazed nightly in well-to-do South Mumbai. They stood for a few minutes, looking through the café windows, then he half caught one of them saying, ‘Come on, brother, let’s do
Bismillah
’ (in the name of God the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful). The two then delved into their sacks and pulled out matt-black and cherrywood assault rifles. What were they up to? As they entered the café, hurling something into the crowd of diners, a flash temporarily blinded Sorte. The thunderclap that followed made his ears whistle, as smoke poured out of the Leopold, followed by a blast wave that smacked him down on the pavement, glass and debris shredding his shirt as the sound of automatic gunfire –
ack, ack, ack –
rose up.