Third World War (50 page)

Mehta had even taken a conference call with Meenakshi, Lizzie, and West to find a line to destroy Jamie Song's argument which had so powerfully blamed democracy for causing poverty.

'Dad, if you're going to win this, you have to concede something,' Lizzie West had argued. 'Not on democracy, but on the international banking system and on commodity trading.'

'If I concede a damn thing - whether rightly or wrongly - I'm defeated,' said West. 'What I need is proof that he is full of bullshit.'

'Then talk about the human spirit, Mr President,' said Meenakshi.

'What about it?'

'Well,' and she drew a deep breath, 'I have worked both in Bihar in India and in Gansu in western China. Both are poverty-stricken. But in Gansu the government controls everything, even how many children are born. In Bihar, in the most appalling conditions, they still feel they have the right to speak out and make decisions.' Meenakshi's voice had become emotional. 'The thing is, Mr President, if you take away people's minds, they do lose everything. There is no happiness. You tell Jamie Song that we, in India, tried their methods in the 1970s and they failed. And if China ever becomes a shining beacon of the arts, of science, literature and music, with world-class highways, hospitals, schools and skyscrapers, then he can boast. But it is not now, and I believe it never will be, because at some stage the human spirit comes into conflict with the power that wants to control it. Our system - and your system, Mr President - allows for the growth of the human spirit. In China, it does not, and when there is conflict it will break the country in two.'

'You got that, Dad?' asked Lizzie bluntly. 'And if you need it, I'll get you the statistics to prove it.'

'Thanks, Meenakshi,' agreed West. 'Vasant, we'll hold on to your daughter for a while, if you don't mind. I think I've just appointed her presidential adviser.'

Mehta had found himself choking with pride, but laughing at the same time. The strangest thing was that no one mentioned Delhi. The conversation could have taken place before the nuclear strike had happened. Nor had they talked about the American bombing of Pakistan's missile sites in the Chagai Hills. Their own human spirit prevented them from lingering over even the recent past and propelled them forward towards a solution - until Deepak Suri cut harshly into the conversation.

Mehta turned. His Chief of Defence Staff, unshaven, his uniform stained and unwashed, stood up, signalled to his aide-de-camp at a computer terminal and raised a forefinger towards Mehta. 'They've launched,' he said. Mehta heard him both from his earpiece and from across the room.

'Vasant?' queries West.

'One second,' said Mehta abruptly.

'Eleven minutes to impact,' said Suri, his tone composed. 'Four, sorry, six missiles--'

'Warheads?'

'Don't know.'

The nod which Mehta gave to Suri was barely perceptible, and he gave it instead of a verbal command so that West would not hear. Suri turned fractionally and with the same forefinger gesture passed the command on to his aide-de-camp, who spoke into his mouthpiece, while repeating the instruction into the computer.

'Vasant? Vasant?' pressed West, the tension showing in his voice.

'Mumbai, Trombay, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Goa - first estimates,' said Suri.

But did it matter? Mehta asked himself. As a functioning society, India was finished. It would recreate itself, but for the immediate future it would be engulfed in tragedy.

'Vasant?'

'Yes, Jim,' said Mehta softly. 'Your intervention did not work. They launched and we have responded.'

'No.' It was almost a cry of anguish from the American President. 'No. Wait.'

'We did wait, Jim,' said Mehta. 'We waited after our Parliament was attacked, my house destroyed, my capital city destroyed. I think we waited too long.' His voice was distant as if he was talking to an unknown power somewhere far away, and that Jim West just happened to be the person closest.

'Karachi and Hyderabad are targeted by missile and submarine launches,' said Suri. 'Multan, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Sarghoda and Peshawar. Islamabad and Rawalpindi will be the first hit. ETA eight minutes thirty.'

'Meenakshi, are you there?' said Mehta.

'Yes, Father.'

'We will not see each other again,' he said. 'You are now under the protection of Jim West. I love you more than anything, and on this terrible, terrible day, I can only see one ray of hope - that you are in America and not here.'

'I'm coming out. I'll be needed--'

'You are not,' said Mehta. 'It will not finish here.' No one, including him, could even imagine what would be left of India in half an hour's time. 'Jim, are you hearing this?'

'I'm here, Vasant.'

'My daughters are under your protection. Ensure they receive protection as if they were your own family.'

'ETA Mumbai four minutes twenty,' said Suri.

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58*

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Moscow, Russia*

'President Song is unavailable,' said Alexander Yushchuk, frowning when Kozlov simply tilted his head in response. The Russian President watched his daughter, whom he could see through the door, and whose cello music filled the small study. Satellite images of nuclear clouds over India and Pakistan were being relayed on a screen that Yushchuk had rigged up above his desk. Yushchuk was about to say something else, when BBC and CNN, showing on two separate sets, almost simultaneously, broke into their programmes and switched to the same pictures.

Kozlov had no idea what Ekatarina was playing. He had never been much good with music. Her boyfriend, his uniform neatly pressed and his boots polished, sat bewitched across the room, smoking. He was a confused young man from the army, an engineer whose bland practicality soothed Ekatarina. He had a military mind, yet tried to be an intellectual to impress her father, and Kozlov was not sure if he liked him; not sure if any father liked his daughter's first boyfriend. If Russia became like India, he would send them into the bunker together, so he could die knowing they would give him a grandchild.

He glanced at the screens, where there was so much destruction, all looking so much the same, that the thought of a kicking baby in Ekatarina's womb made him feel good.

'Get me Jim West, then,' he said softly.

Yushchuk pressed a button. 'Actually, he's calling you right now.'

Kozlov stood up and kicked the door to close it. He caught Ekatarina's eye and noticed fleeting disappointment. A note faltered before she found sanctuary in the music sheet. Through the gap, as the door closed, Kozlov blew a kiss and smiled at her.

'Jim,' he said in English, giving the American President no time to initiate the conversation. 'The only useful thing you can do right now is make sure that Japan does nothing. If you have to make a statement, keep it bland. Do not respond; do not react; and do not threaten. I hope you understand perfectly what I am saying.'

'We need to talk properly--'

'No, Jim. We need to think properly. You chose to strike Pakistan. Nolan, with your blessing, struck North Korea. And this is what has happened. If Jamie Song has lost control in China, you are headed into a big war. And I have treaty obligations with China that would set Russia against the United States.'

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59*

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Tokyo, Japan*

'The only disaster we are equipped to deal with is an earthquake,' said Kiyoko, as Prime Minister Sato's disguised limousine edged through the Tokyo traffic. Sato rested his hand on her elbow but looked away, out of the tinted glass on to the teeming streets. After the tests, he had felt not exhilarated as he had expected but exceedingly tired, and he wanted to sleep for a very long time.

The later explosions over India and Pakistan had been picked up by satellites, even by passengers with video cameras on airliners not yet rerouted. Flaming red, encircled by grey and black and enveloped in the deep blue, stretched above the curve of the earth like a farewell banner.

'Start the broadcasts,' he said. He felt the shift of Kiyoko's arm as she concentrated on her telephone. He slid his window down a little. Bland music played from speakers in the streets. Then it stopped and a calm voice said: 'This is an emergency. Please go home. Close your businesses, go home and await further instructions.'

The pace on the street slowed. Heads tilted up to hear the message again. Confirmation was sought. The young found refuge in their mobile phones. The middle-aged, with families to protect, walked purposefully towards the nearest subway station. The elderly were reflective. A woman cried. A man dropped his walking stick and squatted on the cold pavement, his eyes looking far away. An old couple stopped, their faces worked over by the years, but their eyes as expressive as children's, while they heard the message for the third time. They embraced, clasped like statues, their age bringing a stillness to the street.

This was the generation that would have remembered Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had lived through the firebombing of Tokyo. They were not the ones who had set Sato on the path to free Japan from its ties with America. Sato saw now, so clearly, that anyone who had lived through a nuclear attack would not care who ran their lives as long as they were safe. But they were not his constituents.

Kiyoko passed him the telephone. 'It is the White House,' she said gently.

Sato shook his head. 'Park Ho will launch on us,' he said. 'Jim West will tell me to do nothing. But I cannot do nothing, so we have nothing to discuss.'

They rode in silence. He looked up and saw they were at the corner of Hakumi-dori and Hibaya-dori, a junction dominated by the building from where General Douglas MacArthur ruled Japan after the Second World War. The driver turned north along Hibiya-dori into the Marunouchi district, the home turf of corporate Japan. What had happened to the glory days of the 1980s, when the names of Mitsui, Mitsubishi and Sony were the national flags of Japan's success? Since the seventeenth century Tokyo's commercial capital had been in the east of the city, but after the firebombing it had been rebuilt in Marunouchi, with wide streets and square, squat buildings.

Where would they rebuild it after this, wondered Sato. Kiyoko touched him on the elbow. He turned to her. He loved her, yet she was a stranger to him. He had asked if she wanted to go to safety. She had refused, and although the mantle was with Yamada, she had chosen to be with him, and he was grateful. The telephone call was from Yamada, but Sato did not need to take it. Yamada had his orders: he was to see the war through until a Japanese victory - whatever the cost.

Sato took in the sharp smells from outside, tobacco smoke and petrol fumes, then slid the window up. If he was doubtful, Kiyoko's eyes were cool and directly on him. There was an unmovable calmness in them.

He touched her hand, and Kiyoko relayed the message back to Japan's Defence Minister.

By trying to play God and change the shape of Japan, had Sato brought about its destruction? But if it had remained as it was now, entrapped by America, it would have become a slowly dying nation, bereft of ideas and a future.

Kiyoko closed the telephone. She took his hand. 'Don't try to judge,' she said softly. 'It has happened.'

Across the road, Sato saw the line of cypress trees and the wall that marked the boundary of the Imperial Palace. The moat was serene and flat, and he watched in it the orange reflection of the sky lighting up with a flash and the ripples gently spreading out.

He had seen Delhi. He knew what would happen. Sato tasted something bitter in the back of his throat.

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60*

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Zamyn-uud, southern Mongolia*

Wind whipped up the sand into such a swirl that it was impossible to see across the runway. Even guarded from the worst gusts by huddling behind the undercarriage of the Osprey, Lazaro Campbell had difficulty hearing the instructions from Kozerski in the White House.

After the nuclear attack on Tokyo, China's airspace had been closed to foreign traffic. The temperature at the airstrip in the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-uud was fifteen below zero. Wind speeds fluctuated between nothing and sixty miles an hour, tearing the covers off the engine cowlings and forcing frozen sand into everything. Campbell's face carried a dozen tiny cuts and was now wrapped in a scarf, his eyes protected by goggles.

'Tokyo's gone,' he heard Kozerski say in his earpiece. 'No one's picking up the phone in Beijing. The British and Japanese embassies--' A gust sent a roar around the plane. The pilot and engineer were in the cockpit with the engines running to keep out the sand.