Third World War (17 page)

Song stalked round the desk. 'Don't mess with me, Qureshi. Azad Kashmir is your territory. So I will ask you again: Is the Lashkar-e-Jannat trained in Pakistan?'

'Yes.'

'Did you order the attack on the Indian Parliament?'

'No.'

'Do you know those who did?'

'No.'

'Do you know senior members of the intelligence agencies or military who would have supported the attack?'

Qureshi hesitated. He glanced round towards Yan, but Yan might have been a statue for all the support he was giving. 'Yes.'

'Did you know in advance about the assassination of President Khan?'

'No.' That was the big lie, and to tell it, Qureshi made sure his expression remained unchanged, his eyes lowered, his hands clasped in front of him, his head slightly tilted down. Gone was the ebullience and confidence of the former fighter pilot. In its place, Qureshi had installed humility because that was what Song in his present mood demanded.

'Did you know in advance about the uprisings in South-East Asia?'

'No.'

'Do you know the colonels who staged the coup d'etat in Brunei?'

'No.'

'Did you transport any weaponry, nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional, in your aircraft to North Korea?'

'No.' And that was the second lie. Qureshi briefly closed his eyes and wondered if Song had noticed and if he had guessed. The next question took some time in coming. 'Do you support the assassination of President Khan?'

'No.'

'Do you support the attack on the Indian Parliament?'

'No.'

'Do you support the uprisings in South-East Asia?'

'I understand them.'

'Answer me, damn you. Do you support them?'

'Yes. But we have not sent any weapons, money, men.' Qureshi stepped forward, prompting Yan to stiffen. 'I support it because in my heart I believe the Islamic people have been suppressed and their uprising is a natural manifestation of that.' Now he leant on the desk, and Song let him. 'Your question is not one to which I can give a yes or no answer. You should know that, President Song. China is what she is today because Mao Tse-tung led her people against oppression.'

He moved back, his point made, his emotions displayed. 'And you have no right to treat me like a criminal.'

'Nor did I have the right to treat you like a national leader,' retorted Song. 'Yet I made the mistake of doing so.' He picked up the marble balls, testing their weight. As he rotated them in his hand, he walked over to Yan and spoke quietly to him so Qureshi couldn't hear. Yan nodded and left the room.

'Vasant Mehta has asked me to withdraw our technicians and scientists from your missile and nuclear programme within seven days,' said Song, pacing the room, keeping Qureshi with his back to him. Qureshi looked round sharply. 'Mehta wants us to share our intelligence,' Song continued. 'He wants a full arms embargo on Pakistan.'

'Impossible,' said Qureshi shaking his head.

'Not impossible,' contradicted Song. He moved round so that he faced Qureshi and sat casually on the corner of the desk. 'I want the men responsible for planning, ordering and executing that attack arrested and brought to China. I am providing you with a 747-400 and two companies of special forces troops who will secure the aircraft for the journey back. The men you deliver to me will match a list provided by India. I will give you three days. If you do not comply, I will accede to the Indian Prime Minister's request. China's alliance with Pakistan will be over. Should India have to go to war with you, we will support India. Am I clear?'

'Three days?' asked Qureshi. 'You said Mehta gave you a week.'

Song pressed a button under the ridge of the desk. Qureshi heard Song's voice from a speaker on a far wall: '. . . China's alliance with Pakistan will be over. Should India have to go to war with you, we will support India. Am I clear?'

Qureshi looked furiously at Song.

'Within half an hour, Mehta will have this recording,' said Song. 'You may have trouble convincing your fellow officers. So we have four extra days. For now, you can think of me as your friend.'*

*****

Qureshi tried to sleep, but the shuttling from city to city had left him without exercise and his body restless. Mehta had thrown down a gauntlet to Song, and Song had passed it on to Qureshi. The gauntlet would stop with whoever resisted taking it, and Qureshi's mind churned as to whether that should be him, and whether, even if he wanted to, he could achieve what Song had demanded.

Out of the window the night was absolutely clear, and he was able to see clusters of lights on the ground from 30,000 feet. The sky map told him he was above Xinjiang, China's own troubled border province where Islam was challenging the rule of the Communist Party.

There had been a deal, struck many years ago. Pakistan would stop insurgents being imported into Xinjiang. They could go to Afghanistan and to Kashmir, and after the 2001 War on Terror they were sent to Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. But never would one trained Jihad fighter be allowed to operate in Xinjiang or anywhere that directly endangered Chinese territory. If they were found, they would be rooted out and executed. In return, Pakistan would receive unlimited military support from China.

Song must have calculated that the attack on the Indian Parliament was a greater threat to China's stability than insurgency in Xinjiang, and was, therefore, planning to break the agreement.

Qureshi would have faced down Song, and told him some cold facts of political life. But it was too early, and some elements of Qureshi's plan were not yet in place.

But Song was wrong. If the momentum was to have been stopped, it should have been in 1979, when Pakistan's democratically elected prime minister was executed by a military dictator; it should have been in 1980 when Pakistan became the launch base for the Islamic forces fighting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; it should have been in 1990, when the Soviet Union was defeated, American money vanished, and the money of extreme Islam poured into the schools, the military and the government. And when the 2001 War on Terror began, it was too late. To the outside world, President Khan had been a symbol of hope. But for Qureshi, he was an instrument of the Americans, placed there, bankrolled by them, and the ultimate weapon designed to destroy the vision for which Pakistan was created.

Yes, Qureshi had been right to have him killed. Had Khan remained in office, the nation would have slipped backwards again. America had never understood that democracy created tribalism; that the money needed for electioneering spread corruption; that broken promises of politicians created despair and resentment.

Strange. Jamie Song understood. He and his predecessors had kept China free of democratic institutions. Strange that he was acting as he was!

As Qureshi drifted in and out of sleep, his mind trying to run with the light turbulence and the change of engine sound, this was the question that perplexed him most. No nation destroys a historic alliance without having another to put in its place. But China and India could never be allies. Their borders, their beliefs, their ambitions would all make it impossible. So what was Song playing at, and would Qureshi be able to call his bluff?

The Air China plane landed and taxied to a remote area of the airport at Islamabad. Qureshi changed into a full dress uniform, checked himself in the toilet mirror, smoothing down his jacket and running a tiny comb through his moustache. A limousine waited at the foot of the steps for him, but no colleagues. He was driven alone to Chaklala, the military cantonment area of Rawalpindi. From the limousine's darkened windows, he was shamefully reminded of the filth and poverty in his country. However new a building, however freshly repaired a road, a beggar in rags would find his way on to it to remind him that whatever had been built was only a facade covering the real failed texture of his nation. China had not been like this; nor had North Korea.

As the car pulled up and the door was opened for him, Qureshi identified the distinct dark uniform of the Special Services Group taking up positions around his vehicle. He stepped out. The captain in charge saluted. He walked, unaccompanied, through to the General Headquarters. Staff stopped their work and stood to attention as he passed. The lift was ready for him, and took him straight down to the underground command and control room. As the lift door opened, Brigadier Najeeb Hussain stood at the head of a line of military officers, his hand outstretched.

'Welcome, President Tassudaq Qureshi of Pakistan,' he said, with a huge smile on his face. 'The destiny of our nation is now in your hands.'

****

23*

****

Rawalpindi, Pakistan*

Qureshi stepped across the threshold, finding his hand grasped by Najeeb Hussain, and hearing the rumble of outdated air conditioning in the silence which only military discipline could ever instil in Pakistan. Behind Hussain was Admiral Javed Mohmand, commander of the navy, a long, sinewy man, his hands rubbing together in front of him, his eyes blinking and wide, as if Qureshi was an apparition from the heavens. Next to him was General Zaid Musa, taller but more muscular than Hussain, smiling and welcoming, but his face a little too sincere, given that he and Qureshi had violently disagreed in the past.

As Qureshi moved down the line, shaking hands, squeezing elbows, patting shoulders, he understood how, at the precise moment of a military takeover, power was reversed. Momentarily it was being held by the men who greeted him. But when he reached the end of the line, Hussain ushered him through a door into a briefing room. Inside was a group of officers from all services, who, if he got it wrong, would be the ones to overthrow and possibly execute him.

Hussain moved slightly ahead of Qureshi and lightly held the back of a chair. 'We are military men, so I will not spend time on flowery words,' he said. 'As you may have heard, Vice-President Zafar has been taken ill with heart problems. This morning he left for medical treatment in Dubai.' Hussain paused as a barely detectable ripple of mirth spread through the audience.

'The new President of Pakistan is Air Vice-Marshal Qureshi. All of you know him, either personally or through his formidable reputation as a leader. We have chosen him because of his military record, his dedication to our missile and nuclear programmes and his determination to see our vision come to fruition. President Qureshi has, within the past hour, arrived back in Pakistan from China. He has also been in North Korea, which, as you know, has undergone a similar change of government as here.' Hussain let go the chair, clapped his hands together and stepped to one side. 'So without further ado, gentlemen, I present to you the President of Pakistan.'

Qureshi walked to the centre of a small dais in front of a blank, grubby white screen pulled down from the low ceiling. The room served both as a briefing area and a mess room. The central area was taken up with classroom-style desks and chairs. Around the sides were old sofas, armchairs and coffee tables, marked with cigarette burns. The badly circulated air smelt of stale tobacco. On the walls were a mix of posters and maps, some with Islamic slogans, some with military slogans. There were several montages of regiments on the front line in Kashmir and ships' crews out on exercise in the Indian Ocean.

He cast his eyes over his audience. These were the officers who still ran ships, submarines, aircraft, artillery and tanks. They knew where the fuel, the ammunition and the missiles were stored. They had the keys to warehouses. They commanded men in battle. They were colonels, squadron leaders and warship captains. Without their support the generals could not have acted as they did. What Qureshi once was, they were now, and as they sat, some with notebooks like students in a classroom, their expressions were not of the sycophancy and congratulations that had greeted Qureshi outside the lift but of judgement.

But how much did they know? Were they aware of the new missile arsenals under separate command and control structures assembled at five different sites in the country? Did they know that North Korea was now assembling a Pakistani tactical nuclear weapon to use, if necessary, against the United States on the Pacific front? Did they know that it was he, Qureshi, who had devised the assassination of President Khan and called in a favour from al-Qaida to carry it out?

'This room's a dump,' said Qureshi bluntly, putting his cap on the desk in front of him. 'As soon as I'm done, it will be cleared up, repainted and the air conditioning will be fixed.' He offered no charm, no courtesy. He stared down his audience, his eyes blazing with the irritation, until suddenly, a mask of change rippled across his face.

'My parents come from Delhi,' he continued, more softly. 'It was touch and go as to whether they would abandon their home at Partition and move to Pakistan. Or whether they would stay as part of the Muslim elite in a secular India. If they had, I might have become an Air Vice-Marshal in the Indian air force, priming the airborne Agni missile for launches against Pakistan. Such is the knife-edge of this damned situation we find ourselves in.'