The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

1

Meenakshi Mehta, dressed in denim jeans, trainers and a bright-red shirt, was talking on the phone when her father emerged from his shower, ready to go to Parliament. He dropped a file on his daughter's lap. 'What do you think?' he asked, pulling out a chair. He sat down, poured himself a coffee and pulled a slice of brown toast out of the rack on the table.

Knowing her father's habit of interrupting, Meenakshi put her finger to her lips for him to be quiet.

'No, Lizzie, we're not going to be gassed,' she laughed into the phone, moving the file from her lap on to the table and glancing at the title. 'But father's heading off for work now, so I had better see him away in a manner that befits a prime minister.' She tapped her napkin at her cheek to indicate that her father had a speck of marmalade on his lip. Vasant Mehta wiped it off.

'I don't think so, but I'll ask.' She took the phone away from her ear, but did not cover the mouthpiece. 'Lizzie West says do you want a word with her dad?'

Mehta checked the antique clock on the dining-room wall, calculating that it would be coming up to 11 p.m. in Washington. He had no wish of word getting out that the hour before his historic address to both houses of Parliament he had been on the phone to the President of the United States.

''I'd love to,' he said reaching for his coffee. 'But another time. Jim will understand.'

'And Lizzie's offering to send over special suits that will protect us from all the nasties the Pakistanis can send over.'

Mehta shook his head. 'Tell her, thanks but we're fine,' he said. The coffee was hotter than he expected. He coughed slightly as it caught in his throat. He was a slight man, two inches short of six feet, his tousled hair receding but showing no sign of thinning. His carefully groomed and slightly greying moustache disguised the prominence of his cheekbones and his chin. The press hailed him as the most charismatic Indian prime minister in decades, but his eyes, dulled by trials in his personal life, were no longer bursting with either ambition or vision. Mehta saw the world as a place where survival was paramount. Anything beyond that would be an unexpected luxury.

'I have to make a statement on Pakistan,' explained Mehta, reaching for the marmalade.

'Why bother?' responded Meenakshi dryly. 'It hasn't changed for sixty years. We're on the brink of war, surely? Always have been. Always will be.' She picked up a rubber band she had left on the table, pushed back her hair, tied it up and began reading.

'Surely not,' said Mehta, falling silent and watching his daughter read.

'You like Khan, don't you?' She looked at him curiously. 'I can tell, by what you've put in your speech. No Indian politician would be seen dead praising a Pakistani president like that.'

'Nothing wrong with liking a good man,' said Mehta.

Meenakshi closed the file. 'Your daughter, fortunately, is not a politician, and now has to get back to her paper on government and poverty in the developing world.' She teasingly grimaced and furrowed her brow. 'I'm on the warpath. So prime ministers, wherever you are, take note.'

Six months earlier, Meenakshi had gone through a difficult divorce and she had come to spend more and more time at Race Course Road. The security and fanfare surrounding her father irritated her, but it was also a luxury to be waited on hand and foot and a relaxation from her work as a doctor in some of the poorest areas of India.

She wiped her lips with her napkin, then folded it and slid it into its silver ring. Mehta got up, walked over, kissed her on the forehead and put his hands on her shoulders. 'Is there any chance you could spare the morning for your father?' he asked with a smile.

Meenakshi frowned. 'You want me to come to the zoo with you?'

'If that's what you call the Lok Sabha, the debating chamber of the world's biggest democracy, then yes. If the animals attack, my daughter's face in the crowd would soothe me.'

'Father,' she said suspiciously. 'Are you being tricky with me? I'm a doctor. I work in the slums. I'm not one of your political intellectual elite.'

'And that's precisely why I want you there.'

'Dressed like this?' she asked, pulling down the shoulder of her shirt to straighten it.

'Most of my cabinet seem to dress like you,' answered Mehta with a shrug.

'All right then,' agreed Meenashki, throwing back her head with a chuckle. It was one of those rare moments when Mehta admitted he needed his daughters after his tumultuous separation from Geeta. Meenakshi made the house seem less empty and gave him the family company that he needed.

Mehta opened the door for her and they walked through the library, where the walls shimmered with different hues of sunlight. Beyond the library was a small ante-room and outside that door were the public areas of his residence. Two bodyguards snapped to attention. A servant opened the double doors to the hallway where Mehta's bespectacled and awkward private secretary, Ashish Uddin, jumped up from a chair. Another servant opened the front door and two more bodyguards stood by the doors on each side of the white Ambassador car in the driveway.

The specially built vehicle had a bulletproof chassis and glass, with communication aerials embedded in the back window for both radio and satellite telephones. The number plates were changed daily to confuse attackers. Uddin followed in a replica white Ambassador. Three security cars pulled out with them. An ambulance was directly behind, with a vehicle following to scan against missile attacks. Special forces vehicles were at the front and the back of the convoy.

'Mother called last night,' said Meenakshi, tapping the thick glass window and looking out on to Raisana Hill which led up to the elegant government buildings. 'Don't treat her too harshly, Dad.'

'What did she want?' asked Mehta, his pen hovering over a paragraph of his speech.

'I think she wanted to talk to you. To be friends.' Meenakshi clasped her hands together and looked round sharply at her father. 'I'm sorry. Your mind's on more important things.'

Mehta finished his correction and smiled. 'Not at all. That is why I asked you to be with me.'

'What — to remind you of your dysfunctional family?' Meenakshi laughed.

'No different from the dysfunctional family of the Indian subcontinent,' said Mehta. 'Next time she calls, I'll talk pleasantly to her.' He cast his eyes down the rest of the page and spotted something else he wanted to change. 'Always, when she's between boyfriends, she wants to speak to her ex-husband,' he said, scratching out a word and putting another in its place. 'Or if she's with a man, it's when her ex-husband gets his name in the newspapers.' He shot her a sideways glance, which was met by Meenakshi's own firm expression.

'She's weak, Dad. She's not bad.'

'That's what they tell me about Pakistan.' Mehta's eyes went back to his speech. As the car passed the pink Rajasthan sandstone of India Gate, the winter sun caught the government buildings making them shimmer. Freshly mown grass stretched out on both sides of the road which rose and fell like a sweep of land carrying with it armadas of motorcycles, cars, bicyclists and the movement of people through the heart of a great city.

The prime minister's car turned left towards the imposing circular building of the Indian Parliament, the seat of the world's biggest, yet most fractious democracy. The convoy was waved through the security cordon and the gate in the sandstone wall of the Parliament House estate, where it pulled up outside the vast circular building.

The Prime Minister got out of the right-hand door. Then just as Meenakshi was climbing out of the left, Mehta heard the distinctive and familiar ripple of an explosive blast not far away.

'Get down,' he shouted, jumping over the bonnet of the car, and pulling his daughter to the ground. Commandos leapt out of their own cars and formed a protective ring. More troops sealed off the entrances to the compound and the doors to the buildings.

Then, strangely, as if life had only paused for a couple of beats, nothing else happened. The brisk activity outside the parliament building stalled and slowly took up again. The balcony which ringed the building just above the debating chamber filled with people, craning over to see what had happened.

Mehta unfurled himself from his daughter and began standing up. But he was ordered back down by a bodyguard. 'Stay down, sir,' he said firmly.

Meenakshi wriggled out and started uncoiling. 'You, too, ma'am,' added the captain. 'The area is not yet secure.'

All Mehta could see were the feet, legs and black-uniformed backsides of his bodyguards. The captain's radio crackled into life, the reception so distorted that Mehta could not make out what was being said. 'What was it?' he asked.

'Sounds like a suicide bomber, sir,' said the captain. 'Near India Gate.'

Mehta shuddered. How long since India had been victim of a suicide terror attack? And what coincidence that it should happen now, as he was about to make a parliamentary statement on the power vacuum in Pakistan.

He arranged himself so that he was squatting more comfortably. 'Are you all right?' he checked with his daughter. Meenakshi sat cross-legged on the ground

'I'm fine,' she replied, brushing dirt off her jeans. She addressed the captain with the instincts of a doctor. 'Is anyone hurt?'

'Yes. But we don't know—'

Sharply, his fingers tightened around his weapon and his head jerked round with the sound of a second explosion, also some way away and from the direction of Connaught Place. He shot a look back at his principals to ensure they remained protected. Meenakshi began scrambling to her feet, but her father grabbed her wrists to get her back down. 'If this were one of your patients, how would you diagnose the attack?' he asked calmly.

'Mild, Father, mild,' said Meenakshi, 'if you are talking about the nation. For the victims it's a bloody disaster.'

Then, before she had finished her sentence, a white Ambassador car, parked just outside Gate 12, erupted into a fireball. Seconds later, another car exploded outside Gate 9. In the initial confusion, as debris still rained down, men dressed in a mix of olive-green fatigues and the black uniforms of the Special Protection Unit ran through the gates.

Once inside the compound, the attackers separated. They did not open fire immediately, waiting until they were dispersed among the crowds. Watching through a gap in his own circle of protection, Mehta recognized their professionalism, the footwork of trained men. It was barely possible to detect friend from foe.

The attackers spread around the massive circular edifice of the building, a third of a mile round. They kept away from the openness of the ornamental gardens and stayed close to the building where people were running to seek protection.

There was a sharp burst of machine-gun fire, sudden, loud and unexpected, despite the chaos of violence around them. It came from the captain's weapon. Meenakshi screamed, but quickly recovered herself, her eyes darting round to check on her father.

Up ahead, three men in black uniforms ran towards them. One plucked a grenade from his tunic and lobbed it.

'Grenade,' yelled the captain, dropping on to his knees, about to cover Mehta. But he was shot in the face, collapsing back, his head a mess of blood. Within seconds two other bodyguards died as well, both hit with shots deliberately placed above the neckline to avoid their flak jackets. Mehta's circle of protection was broken. The grenade rolled along the ground. Mehta now had a clear sight of the bedlam around him: bodies on the ground, people running for cover, firefights in at least three places; the flaming wreckage of one of the car bombs, charred sandstone and fallen debris blackening the lawn. Right next to it, through the churning chaos, he saw three men putting up a mortar.

'Under the car,' he yelled. 'Hands over your head.' He dragged Meenakshi, rolling her in front of him. She squeezed underneath the chassis. He grabbed the fallen captain's weapon — a 9mm Uzi — and wedged himself in next to his daughter, then turned and, in the split second before the grenade exploded, snatched four spare magazines from the dead man's tunic.

The car shook. The chassis shook, but held its ground. The exhaust pipe tore Mehta's clothes and a slice of metal cut his forearm which he had over Meenakshi's back to protect her. In the lull that followed, he saw a solitary gunman running towards them, unclasping another grenade. Mehta shot wildly. He had no firing position, but he knew the weapon well, and hit the attacker in the legs. The attacker fell; the grenade bounced beside him, the pin unplucked.

He heard the whoosh of a mortar, a soft but powerful swell of sound distinct from the cries and gunfire around. The car would protect them from high-velocity weapon fire and grenade shrapnel but not from a direct mortar hit. From years of experience in the low-intensity war with Pakistan, Mehta recognized the threat immediately. He clasped Meenakshi, covered her as best as he could, although he knew it might be useless. He had a view from the ground and he saw the flash of the mortar as it crashed into the roof of the building and exploded.

'Out,' he yelled, scrambling clear, his right hand holding the Uzi, his left hand pulling his daughter free, stepping out, running with her towards the building, up the steps, as automatic gunfire cut into a sandstone balustrade inches away from them. Meenakshi spun round, but Mehta kept going, yanking her along with him until they were inside the door, where troops were taking cover.

They leant against the inside wall, getting their breath. Meenakshi examined a cut on her arm and took her father's hands to check him in the same way. He was unscathed. She dropped them on the second undulation of mortar sound. Mehta brought his daughter's head into his chest and waited for the explosion. They hadn't changed the trajectory. The shell fell through the roof of the building. But what carnage would it cause inside, where at least five hundred people would have been gathered for his speech? God only knew.

'You,' snapped Mehta, pointing to the officer in charge. 'That mortar — neutralize it now. The closest unit. Prime Minister's orders. Now.'

He spotted three men, crouched against an outer balustrade, the closest to the car, and ran down to them. 'Corporal,' he ordered. 'Take your men and retrieve that terrorist alive.' He pointed to the man he had shot minutes earlier in the leg and now bleeding to death where he had fallen.

Mehta spotted a movement in shadows in the curve of the building. Two men ran out, one in black, one in olive green. Their objective was the wounded assailant. They wanted him dead as much as Mehta needed him alive. He expected a grenade, but they kept running. 'Target, two o'clock,' he shouted, letting off a burst of fire from the Uzi. The corporal took it as his signal and sprinted out, with Mehta covering him. One guard was hit, but Mehta found the source immediately and returned fire. It came from the first-floor verandah — the attackers had penetrated that far.

The two surviving attackers kept going. They would get their colleague in a few minutes. The wounded attacker was unconscious. A bodyguard, there first, lifted him on to his shoulders while the other kept watch. But after Mehta's exchange of fire a sudden silence descended around the building. Group by group, politicians and staff caught in the onslaught were making it inside. Police armoured vehicles broke through into the grounds cutting up the grass and the driveway with their hard tracks. Troops spilled out. Sirens of approaching ambulances echoed from the roads outside. Overhead, fighter planes roared.

The wounded attacker was brought just inside the building. They laid him down on the concrete floor. Meenakshi checked his pulse, and pupils. She took a quick look at his legs, took off her shirt and ripped it in two. 'Help me,' she said, to no one in particular. Two solders knelt down with her and followed her instructions as she applied tight tourniquets to both legs.

Mehta was on his mobile phone. 'I want the first ambulance round here. No excuses,' he said. 'I don't care. We have a man, alive, who will talk and give evidence. Nothing is more important.'

Then, as he was listening to the reply, his ear tilted to one side, checking that the ambulance whose siren he could hear was heading in his direction, there was overhead another sound familiar from his days of aircraft training in the Himalaya. It was the vibrating pitch of the engine of a light aircraft. He ran outside to look up. Not one but three were approaching. Far in the distance was the vapour trail of a turning fighter. Small-arms and heavy machine-gun fire broke out from the ground, creating a cordon of lead through which the aircraft would have to fly. One aircraft was hit, turning into a ferocious fireball, an explosion far greater than if just fuel tanks were going off. Its force created a charred circle on the grass and set light to the trees around it as the debris fell, scattering and flaming to the ground. Caught up in the trail, the pilot of the second aircraft turned sharply, but got caught in a secondary blast. He lost control and at such low altitude clipped a tree, somersaulted and crashed. The explosives on board did not detonate until the aircraft broke up on the ground. It sent out a withering heat wave of destruction which wrecked everything in its path.

The third pilot took no evasive action, and flew rock steady through the fiery turbulence. Suddenly, Mehta understood the plan: the diversions, the suicidal firefights inside the grounds, the single repeated trajectory of the mortar to weaken the roof, while people were being brought inside the building to safety. He watched as the Cessna bucked. The pilot was alone, but all around him was what? God, if it was — Mehta thought. It could be nothing else but. A solitary, concentrated figure, with the other spare five seats of the single-engined plane stacked up with boxes. The luggage compartment as well would be laden with high explosives and detonators charged to go off on impact.

The plane adjusted its direction towards the gaping hole in the roof, and as Mehta saw the fuselage plunge in, flames leapt out, then a rumble, then a tearing, ghastly, roar, like the scream of a great animal in the first stages of slaughter, as it exploded halfway down the four storeys of the historic building, crammed with people who had fled there to safety.

'I'm not taking any calls,' insisted Mehta. 'I'll call them when I'm ready. West, Nolan, Song, Kozlov and any of those simplistic humanitarians from the European Union. None of them, do you hear?' He sat down angrily as his private secretary melted away, closing the door and leaving him alone.

When the internal phone rang, Mehta's hand hovered over it before picking it up. Deepak Suri, the Chief of Defence Staff, was on the other end. 'It's Khan,' he said gently. 'I urge you, Prime Minister, if you talk to no one else today, talk to him.'

Mehta nodded and heard the click as Suri transferred the call, and he recognized the distinctive Punjabi accent of President Asif Latif Khan of Pakistan. 'Vasant, it is a tragedy,' said Khan. 'The pilot told me the news as we were coming in to land. I will do all I can—'

'You must, Asif. You must,' said Mehta. 'I don't want to have to fight you.'

'You won't,' replied Khan, but his wasn't a safe answer because both he and Mehta knew he might not have the power to keep his promise. Khan was his friend. Their parents had been educated at the same Karachi school. Mehta had photographs of them playing together as children — until Partition had separated them. The Muslim Khans stayed in Pakistan; the Hindu Mehtas went to India.

'I am offering my condolences to the whole nation, to the families of the victims, to you Vasantji, to Meenakshi and to your family.'

'Thank you,' said Mehta softly. 'Where are you?' he asked, guessing that Pakistan's intelligence agencies would be listening in to their president's call.

'We've just arrived in Malaysia. Should I return?'

'No,' said Mehta firmly. 'No. The less we respond, the less they win. This is character-building time for India and the whole of South Asia.' There was no more to say, unless Khan offered something. Mehta let a silence hang between them, although his temptation was to let fly his anger, to let his friend know the true wrath of the people he governed.

'We were in no way responsible,' Khan said, his voice faltering as if Mehta had made the direct accusation.

'Is that your word, Asif?' Mehta challenged. 'Or is it the word of your armed forces and intelligence agencies?' He knew Khan would never have ordered the attack, but the nation, its institutions, its agencies, its ideology had created the men who would carry it out. For generations, Pakistan had been a breeding ground for terror.

'Before I called you, I spoke to Islamabad. A full and transparent investigation has begun. On that you have my word.'

Mehta looked across at the television screen. The cameras were switching location. They were on the US President, Jim West, walking across the White House lawn from Marine One, the presidential helicopter. A reporter shouted a question about the attack and West, waving a hand, refused to comment. The screen then went live to the Indian home minister visiting the clear-up operation around the parliament building in Delhi.

'If you're serious — after Malaysia — come to Delhi,' said Mehta, upping the stakes. 'Meet me here. Announce it now. Visit the disaster. Pledge to punish. Make it real. Come here before you return to Islamabad.'

For a few seconds the line stayed quiet again, the Pakistani President genuine in intent but politically wrong-footed. The press releases ready to go from the propaganda machine in Islamabad second-guessed by the insistence of a peace summit in the victim country to get things sorted before the vultures overshadowed everything with talk of war.

'Yes. Yes,' said Khan with a sudden weariness in his voice. 'We must meet. I will be in contact with you shortly.' Mehta thought he was ending the call, but Khan continued. 'Vasant, you are my friend. For God's sake trust me. The consequences of not doing so are too serious.'

Before Mehta had replaced the receiver, Deepak Suri walked straight in without knocking. 'Vasantji, with all due respect, what on earth are you playing at? If Khan comes to Delhi, if he visits the parliament site, he'll be lynched. With the best will in the world, we cannot guarantee his safety.'

'He won't come,' said Mehta, distracted by the row of newspapers on his desk. Page after page of pictures of the carnage.

Some chose the intensity of the destruction, showing the inferno across a whole page. Others opted for the sequence of pictures leading to the attack. The tiny speck approaching the building, becoming recognizable as a single-engined plane, to a close-up of the pilot, determined, eyes fixed on his destiny, then the plane plummeting as a missile of high explosives through the roof. It was a chilling symbol of a lone and deadly mission. From inside came the carnage. Nothing was spared. Rows of bodies, draped in shared sheets, seeped with blood. Shocked survivors, dazed, wounded and without help. The mutilated symbols of India. Incongruously, the propeller of the aircraft had survived, twisted but intact. The photographer had framed it hanging from dislodged electrical wires in the Central Hall in front of a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, the founding father of India, torn and splattered with fragments of war.

The pilot had not chosen his target at random. He would have known the layout of the building and would probably have sat in the public gallery to familiarize himself with the target. The Central Hall was decorated with twelve gilded emblems representing the original twelve provinces of India before independence. It was here that the transfer of power had taken place on 15 August 1947 — and it was here that parliamentarians had been gathering to hear Prime Minister Vasant Mehta deliver his address to a joint sitting of both houses. That was why the death toll had reached 476.

On the first-floor balustraded balcony, some of which had come through with barely a scratch, the attackers had daubed the name Laskar-e-Jannat. They had even translated it into English — Army of Paradise. One photograph showed pamphlets caught in a breeze and swirling about like leaves. Next to it was a close-up of one pamphlet. 'Why Are We Waging Jihad?' it asked. And the answer: 'To Restore Islamic Rule Over All Parts of India.'

Yet there was one picture that all newspapers ran prominently on their front pages. It was the one that would rally India through its darkest moments: it showed Mehta changing a magazine in the Uzi and shouting a command while his daughter, Meenakshi, stripped to her bra, applied a tourniquet to the wounded attacker. Both of them were framed between two bullet-chipped sandstone pillars of the parliament building. 'Attacked. Defending. Caring' ran one caption. 'The image of our great nation.'

'Has he talked yet?' asked Mehta, referring to the attacker whose life Meenakshi had saved.

'Not yet, Prime Minister.'

'Documents? Fingerprints?'

Suri put his hands on the desk and looked his friend straight in the eye. 'Fingerprints are being checked by Interpol, Europol and the FBI right now. We have identification of two of the dead, and if we want to trace them to Pakistan, we can. Who ordered them precisely to do what they did, we don't know yet.'

Mehta stood up. 'I need a strike plan by missiles and aircraft on the Pakistani missile bunkers at Sarghoda, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Karachi and Multan. One strike only. Whatever it takes. Prime the Agni for launch, both from silos, and deploy two on the rail launchers. Close the lines if necessary. And on your way out ask Ashish to get me Andrei Kozlov in Moscow.'

Suri left, but the phone rang again too quickly for it to be Moscow. Ashish Uddin had been working in the Prime Minister's South Block office since the attack. Never once had his diffident, but efficient, method of handling Mehta wavered, except now, when he began in a jumble of words, hesitant and apologetic. 'I didn't want to disturb you with this, Prime Minister, and I've already said no many times, and I understand it is the last thing—'

'To the point, Ashish. To the bloody point,' said Mehta, reaching over and pouring himself a glass of water from a jug which had been on his desk far too long. He was about to drink it when Uddin answered. 'It's your wife. She's insisting on speaking to you.'

His hand paused as he brought the glass to the surface of the desk. They used to leave love notes for each other in the kitchen as they led busy and young lives. He couldn't remember who stopped first, or why, or whether the ending of the notes was the first step towards the end of the marriage. Oh Geeta — dear, wild, Geeta, who had given him two wonderful daughters and more misery and love than a man could ever need. Mehta leant back in his chair and gazed at the high ceiling, empty of colour and in need of a coat of paint. He shook his head. 'No, Ashish. Tell her I will call her later today,' he said. 'And has Suri asked you to get me Moscow?'

'On the line, sir. But Mrs Mehta insisted I pass on to you that she thinks you are wonderful.'

'Only because she saw my picture in the paper,' muttered Mehta to himself, as the twitter of a broadband satellite line came through the telephone, followed by the calm and authoritative voice of the Russian President. 'Russia grieves, Vasant,' said Kozlov. 'Russia is angry. We can talk properly later. You are leading your nation right now. How can Russia help?'