Third World War (40 page)

Mehta had insisted on staying at the residence once the ordnance had been cleared and checks had been carried out for biological and chemical weapon fallout. 'We shall not leave,' he had thundered as he pushed Meenakshi's wheelchair through the door to meet the gaping, jagged space of what had once been the dining room. 'And we will tell India we are not leaving this house. No terrorist will expel me from my home.'

The stale smell of destruction had even drifted along to his study which was in a different wing of the house. It was familiar to Meenakshi, who had treated patients in India's most severe areas of decay: rotting, murdered corpses, burnt-out houses and collapsed buildings. Hers was a country of riots, flood and earthquakes, each leaving its own specific stench which finally had reached the one place in the world she had wanted to see as sanctuary.

She leaned in the doorway, pushing her hair back from her face with her free hand. Her father was standing, hands on hips, his back to her, staring at the wall. Deepak Suri, his right arm bound tight in a sling, held a mobile phone to his ear in his left hand, and was speaking softly into a green telephone which was on open speaker, although the conversation was too quiet for anyone to hear. Her father's private secretary, Ashish Uddin, was at the long trestle-like desk pushed up against the wall, working on a laptop. A television, showing the BBC, was on in the corner.

'What are you plotting, Father?' said Meenakshi tenderly as she made her way into the room and sat down in an upright chair near Uddin. In normal times, she would never have ventured into such a meeting. But recently those barriers had been cast aside. Race Course Road had become a fortress. Meenakshi, Uddin and the staff had been shown down into the underground bunker there, and instructed on how to use the survival kits. Mehta himself had checked out the bunker beneath Raisana Hill, which stretched under North and South Block with tunnels to the Parliament complex. Preparations were also being made for him to operate from the new command and control centre in Bhopal in central India, where - if Delhi was destroyed - he would stay until there was 'resolution', as he called it.

'We're plotting peace, I hope,' answered Mehta, turning round, and giving Meenakshi a kiss on both cheeks. 'How was your day?'

'Bloody depressing,' she said. 'It's as if this damn country thinks that by going to war all the problems will be solved. But all they're looking for is someone else to blame.'

'Rommy called,' said Mehta, glancing towards Suri, who with half an ear was trying to pick up what was being said. 'She wanted to fly over, and I told her India was the last place she should be right now.'

Suri motioned to Mehta, covering the mouthpiece of the mobile with his finger. 'We should go to the Bhopal bunker tomorrow morning, and let the press know as soon as you are there.'

'What time?' asked Mehta.

'05.30.'

Mehta nodded. Suri spoke into the mobile. 'That's fine. Let us see the draft of the press release, soonest.' He cut the call, freeing up his good hand to pick up the receiver of the green telephone.

'So you're stuck with only one daughter,' said Meenakshi, shifting her weight on the chair to get comfortable.

'You should leave, too,' suggested Mehta, but not with great enthusiasm. 'Go to London. Go to New York.'

'I'm staying here,' said Meenakshi firmly. 'If we leave this place empty, someone might come and rob it.'

'I'm not allowed to travel to Bhopal either,' said Uddin, pushing his spectacles up his nose and turning round. 'We'll both miss out on the excitement.'

'We're working on it,' Suri said, still on the telephone. 'It's almost finished and we'll get back to you with the PM's initial proposals then.' He cut the call and looked over to Mehta. 'Ashish will send them this, when we've finished. What we suggest is that the Cabinet Committee on Security meets in Bhopal bunker. A South Block photographer will be there and we'll put out a couple of shots with the press release.'

Uddin pressed the display button on his laptop and a map was projected on the wall, showing a draft battle plan, drawn up by Mehta and Suri. Green arrows showed the movement of fighter planes and bombers to airbases near the border. Symbols of battle tanks were clustered around the area between Amritsar and Lahore, and further down in the desert of Rajasthan. Missiles were being made ready at launch sites closest to the border, with railway lines being cleared of civilian traffic to transport troops westward towards Pakistan.

It produced in Meenakshi an unexpected reaction. She loathed what she saw. She knew it came from the trauma of the mortar attack. Nausea swept over her. Her cheeks burnt with a hot flush. 'You're going to do it, aren't you?' she whispered.

'Let's hope not,' said Mehta.

'Not if Qureshi's got any brains,' said Uddin with uncharacteristic bluntness.

'Then what the hell are you doing?' retorted Meenakshi. 'You're pushing him into a corner.' Her voice was louder than she meant it to be, the voice inside her screaming out that there had to be another way, and then another voice of reprimand, asking why she was taking it out on her father.

Mehta walked to her side and touched her on the shoulder. 'I wouldn't do this if we didn't have to. You know that, don't you?'

'I want to know it,' she said impatiently. 'But why is it always more guns and more bombs?'

'If you have another way, tell me, Meenakshi, because I'm flat out of ideas.'

Meenakshi curled her hand around her father's arm, looked up at him and spoke softly, her emotions now in better control. 'I have a patient in Bihar who is diagnosed with a form of sporadic schizophrenia. When he suffers an attack it's pretty dreadful for everyone. He sees and hears a world which doesn't exist. He becomes paranoid and violent. When he's well he works like an ox. He's intelligent, too, full of ideas and is a community leader. I knew he was sick, but I wasn't sure how much to tell the family. If I told the truth, they would either treat him as an outcast, or they would put their all into containing his condition or finding a cure. In short, it would have destroyed the family and village structure. I decided to say nothing. He suffered an attack a month or so ago. He badly beat up a little boy, and it took two days for him to get back to normal. The boy luckily survived. The village handled it and people there got on with their lives.' She let go of Mehta's arm and pushed back her chair to make her legs more comfortable. 'That, father, is a daughter's view.'

'What happened to your patient?'

'He's still working. The quality of life in the village is better with him working than if he were incarcerated, which would bring shame upon his family and divide the village.'

'My daughter's view is much appreciated,' said Mehta. 'And I mean that,' he added thoughtfully, looking again at Uddin's map. 'Do you remember that Jamie Song gave Qureshi an ultimatum to deliver the ringleaders of the terror groups to him in Beijing? Jamie sent us the list of those who arrived on the plane. Not one important figure among them. They were nothing but foot soldiers. The man's laughing at us, and he's made a fool of Jamie.'

'For one man's sickness, my village did not choose to annihilate itself. Why are you preparing to kill 120 million people for one man's arrogance?' And why was she taking on her father like this? God knows, he had tried to stop things getting worse, and he bore the wounds to show it.

'Annihilation's not the point,' argued Mehta. 'As soon as we give him the signal, Jim West will talk directly to Qureshi. After that Jamie will speak with him, and then Andrei Kozlov.' He squeezed his daughter's shoulder.

Meenakshi clasped his hand. 'So what happens, if - you know - if it comes to a nuclear war?'

'It won't,' said Mehta firmly. 'Because if it does, Pakistan will be struck with a hundred nuclear weapons of between 10 and 100 kilotons.'

'Hiroshima was 14 kilotons,' interjected Uddin.

'There would be nothing left at all,' said Mehta. 'Our policy is well known. To attack India would be suicide, and Qureshi would never contemplate it.'

Suddenly, Meenakshi gripped his hand and put her other hand to her mouth. 'Oh my God,' she exclaimed, looking up at the television. 'I hadn't seen what was on.'*

*****

The camera concentrated in turn on each of three figures standing on a rain-soaked runway outside a US military transport plane. A coffin, draped in the Stars and Stripes, was lowered on to the tarmac by hydraulic lift. A lone bugler, in the uniform of the United States Air Force, played the Star Spangled Banner, while Jim West, Caroline Brock and Mary Newman stepped forward with their heads lowered. Caroline unclasped her hands, reached out to Newman, who took her hand then stepped forward with her and rested it on the flag on the coffin. The lens focused on Newman's face, red with burn injuries and her hair even shorter than before, cut to cover up the singeing. It made her look young, alone and vulnerable.

Six Air Force pall-bearers lifted the coffin off the ramp and marched to the waiting hearse. The camera shifted to a wide shot, showing a desolate, rain-swept scene. With the door of the hearse shut, the bugler stepped back. A guard of honour raised their rifles and let off a twenty-one-gun salute, and as the coffin was driven away Jim West stepped forward to a single microphone rigged up in the middle of the tarmac.

'The man who murdered Peter Brock is dead,' he said slowly. A gust of wind caught his hair and a squall of rain hit him in the face. West didn't move. 'He was killed by your brave Secretary of State, Mary Newman.' Briefly the shot went to a close-up of Newman, whose eyes were still lowered. Rain glistened on her hair, and the camera dropped to her clasped hands and the bandages around the hand, burnt from firing the gun.

'The United States of America will destroy the regime responsible for the murder of the man who was my friend and National Security Advisor,' said West. 'It will destroy any regime that supports those people now in charge in North Korea.'

He raised his hand and pointed a finger directly at the camera. 'You know who you are, and we know who you are. Not long ago, South-East Asia was beset with evil. Our allies in Britain, Australia and New Zealand went into Brunei and took it back from those who wanted to turn that part of the world into a prison camp for all who lived there. There are other nations which have been taken over by evil men. When I leave this airfield, I will be talking to my friends in China, Europe, India, Japan, Russia and in South-East Asia. I will then be with Peter Brock's family, paying my last respects as we bury a great American who died trying to find a way to avoid war. After that I will concentrate everything on ridding the world of evil nations.'

****

42*

****

Islamabad, Pakistan*

A swirl of dust and smells of Pakistan swept up from the runway as Hassan Muda stepped off the short internal Pakistan Airways flight from Karachi. He no longer carried the passport under the name of the Briton, Jonathan Desai, or the Australian, Ben Dutta. Muda arrived as a Kuwaiti businessman, Mohhamad Al-Shammari, wearing an open-neck blue shirt, denim jeans, trainers and a white linen jacket, which hung far enough beneath his waistline to conceal the Beretta 9mm he had picked up in Karachi.

Muda had specifically asked for an M1911 .45, and if not that, then a gun from a list of alternative .45s, specifying that he must have the larger-calibre weapon. But in the rushed transit through Karachi, the airport worker had thrust into his hands a cotton bag stuffed with a change of clothes and the pistol, wrapped in green cloth, at the the bottom. Once airborne, Muda had gone to the toilet and seen that it was a Beretta with a silencer attached to the muzzle.

He checked the magazine, left the breech clear, and slipped it into the back of his jeans. The Beretta, once the standard sidearm issued to US ground troops, was delicate and unreliable. It frequently jammed, and the bullet was too light, meaning that he would need at least two shots for his target to fall, possibly three with the decelerating effect of the silencer.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps to wait for Ahmed Memed, who was carefully coming down from the plane, making sure his robe did not get caught on the metal, but also taking his time, breathing deeply to savour the cool winter air of Islamabad.

On the tarmac, he gripped Muda's arm. 'It's good to be back,' he said. 'Very good.'

It had been a long fight from Pyongyang. Soon they had left behind the boulevards of modern Islamabad and edged their way towards Rawalpindi, where the poverty was more acute and the smells became hostile and caught in the throat. Set back from the road was a factory of some kind, its row of chimneys belching smoke out into a clear blue sky. At a gritty road junction, they turned left and drove through a residential area, the houses bigger and the compound walls higher, protected by bored guards with old weapons. Muda recognized where they were. They were waved through into the Pakistan air-force base, driving far inside, across two runways, and pulling up outside a two-storey building, with a corrugated-iron roof and concrete walls.

He let Memed go in first, then followed him through two sets of doors into a dowdy mess room, with smells of stale tea and tobacco, then left past an open door, a glimpse of cracked tiles and the familiar smell of sour urine, into a hallway with notices pinned on to a board, some yellowed with age, others freshly put up, and finally left again, through another set of doors and down two flights of stairs.

When Memed entered, Qureshi embraced him, and kept holding his shoulder as he introduced the cleric to the three military commanders with him.

'Gentlemen,' he said enthusiastically. 'Here is our moral light. Without his authority, I doubt any of us would have chosen the courageous path we have.'

He turned to Memed himself. 'May I introduce you to my colleagues Brigadier Najeeb Hussain, General Zaid Musa, Admiral Javed Mohmand.'

Muda was not mentioned. He stepped back to the wall near the door. On the other side was the bodyguard who had been with them from the airport. He had noticed two other men outside. The windowless room carried a smell of fresh paint, and there was a dry chilliness from the air conditioning. To Muda's right was a blackboard and screen. A raised platform of dark timber stretched out from there for about six feet. The rest of the room was sparsely furnished: half a dozen armchairs, a coffee table, a table near the wall with a television and in the corner furthest from him a desk with a computer.

'Let's sit,' said Qureshi, amiable but in command. He guided Memed by the elbow to an armchair covered with a faded blue linen. For just a moment before Qureshi took the chair next to Memed, Muda spotted indecision on his face.

Mohmand approached Memed, with hands clasped in front of him. 'Welcome. Welcome,' he said. 'In this terrible situation, we need guidance from a man of wisdom.' The bodyguard near Muda shuffled his feet. His tunic was too loose for him to be wearing body armour, and the neck was open. Mohmand stepped past Memed to take Qureshi's hand, then shifted back again to take the seat on the other side of Memed. Hussain and Musa, remaining silent, were left with the chairs opposite, edging them round so that the five men formed a circle.

'President West has stopped short of declaring war on us,' said Qureshi. 'A short time ago, he contacted me directly.' Musa looked sharply across to Qureshi, but did not meet his eyes. Muda detected surprise, which rippled through his expression to anger and then a look of betrayal. Zaid Musa seemed to be a man who knew how to keep his distance. Hussain's head was lowered, happy to let Qureshi lead for the moment.

Only Mohmand reacted. 'Then your leadership is acknowledged,' he said enthusiastically. 'Congratulations.'

To Muda, Mohmand was a man who lacked discrimination and spoke without a thought of the results.

'But we talked before the murder of Peter Brock,' said Qureshi, the darkness in his look enough to sober Mohmand. 'I suspect that whatever leeway we had for negotiation with Jim West then might by now have narrowed considerably.'

'Negotiation,' whispered Hussain. 'I'm not sure that is what this is about.'

'Let me finish,' countered Qureshi. 'We need to absorb the facts.' He coughed, and glanced up at the air conditioning vent. 'According to West, we have three choices. We let the US in to take over our nuclear forces and be subject to inspections Iraq-style. We can let the Chinese do it - although the UN would still be involved with inspections. Or we can brace ourselves for an Indian invasion. Of course, none of these options is acceptable. But what is acceptable, gentlemen?'

'Could we strike a deal with the Chinese?' asked Hussain. 'You were the last to see Jamie Song.'

'We might,' said Qureshi slowly. 'It might stop the immediate threat of war. But it would be messy.'

Mohmand leaned forward, impatient to speak again. 'Aren't we missing the main point here? Our war is with India, surely. Not with America. The threat comes from Vasant Mehta's emotional response to something we had no control over.'

Muda eased himself away from the wall against which he was leaning, and slid out the Beretta. His eyes shifted right, and he saw that the bodyguard had noticed his movement. Muda took a tiny step forward, pretending to shift weight. The bodyguard smirked. Muda had received no instructions about the bodyguard.

'It was not us who attacked the parliament,' said Mohmand. 'Nor did we mortar his house. We have committed no act of war, and Jim West has to--'

Muda raised the pistol and fired twice. His shots hit the bodyguard in the centre of the forehead. Even before he had dropped, Muda took three steps into the centre of the room, and shot Mohmand three times - once in the forehead and twice in the area of the heart. Muda twisted his body, just a fraction, keeping the pistol raised and was about to fire on Qureshi when Memed, with the faintest wave of his hand, signalled him to stop.

There was nowhere Qureshi could have gone. To have fumbled at the leather cover of his pistol holster would have been a ridiculous act of bravado. Across the room, the bodyguard had died without a sound. A single trickle of blood drained from the back of his head. Mohmand was dead, but the bullet had missed his brain stem, so the body was moving and a gurgling sound came from his throat. The armchair's blue linen cover was soaked in blood.

Memed had not moved. Muda stood there, his gun trained on Qureshi. Memed tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair, his expression a mixture of nonchalance and impatience. Muda was cool and professional, his gaze riveted on Qureshi's holster. Qureshi wondered where he had received his training. Probably at some camp in Afghanistan or Indonesia, backed up by evenings of watching paramilitary videos.

'Hassan Muda designed the mortars fired on Race Course Road,' said Hussain. Zaid Musa stood up and, with Muda, lifted Mohmand's body to the corner of the room and laid it next to the computer table. They left the corpse of the bodyguard by the door. Musa plucked a handkerchief from his tunic pocket and soaked up arterial blood which had got on to his sleeve.

Qureshi said nothing. Witnessing the cold-blooded murder of two human beings, no matter how far they themselves might have been removed from innocence, left nothing but a numbness in his mind, particularly as he himself had been within a second of receiving three bullets from Muda's silenced pistol into his skull and chest, he presumed, just as Mohmand had. He looked at Musa, who returned his stare with unflinching certainty. Qureshi remembered the false sycophancy with which Zaid Musa had greeted him on his return from China. By reading the faces around the room, he became certain of one thing. Mohmand's death had been planned well in advance. As for his own, Qureshi just couldn't tell. But the moment he ordered the assassination of President Khan, he had expected to meet a violent death as well.

'Tassudaq Qureshi is my friend,' said Memed. 'I have known him for many years. I have eaten with his family.'

His words left a silence in the room. On a flicker of the eye from Memed, Muda lowered his pistol.

'If you are not with us, you will have to go,' said Hussain, his voice casual, almost comforting. As he paused, he pursed his lips.

To read Hussain's meaning, Qureshi needed context. His mind had cleared, and, like the pilot he was, he meticulously channelled away extraneous information and concentrated on what was in front of him.

'This is not about India, as we all know,' he said. 'It is about Pakistan, Islam and our nuclear strength.' He looked not at Hussain, nor at Memed, but at Zaid Musa, whom he guessed had ordered the killings, including his own - and had been overruled in the final seconds by Memed. 'We did not work all these years to create our weapons only to give them away to another power.'