The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

25

After dining with his family in his sprawling house just outside Islamabad, Qureshi walked through the garden, past the unfamiliar sight of armed guards deployed everywhere around him, and climbed into the back seat of the waiting car. Below him were the glittering lights of the city. From their density, he could distinguish between the slums and the wide boulevards of the government buildings and Parliament. Only the slums existed as a real, functioning environment. The other half of Pakistan was a facade.

Qureshi had told nobody of the deadline set him by Jamie Song. Within the next six days, he had to arrest anyone involved in the attack on the Indian Parliament and deliver them to Chinese troops waiting on board a 747 at Islamabad airport, to be flown to a jail in China, where they would be held without trial. He respected Jamie Song for his imagination, but that was all it was.

Qureshi had showered, eaten supper with his wife, Tasneem, smoked, paced his garden and thought. He had not mentioned a word to Tasneem. Like most Pakistanis, she knew that their vice-president was in exile, but remained ignorant about the military takeover. And Tasneem would never intrude into her husband's work or his thoughts on such matters.

Their children were away from home. Akbar, Zeenat and Bashir were at boarding school. Javed was on a gap year in France, and Farrah, the oldest, had just moved out and set up in an apartment in Lahore.

It was this and not the unfolding political crisis that concentrated Tasneem's mind. Farrah, a beautiful and vulnerable nineteen-year-old, had defied her mother's wishes and had moved out of the house and out of the city in which they lived. Qureshi, with only a fraction of his mind on his daughter's wilfulness, had backed his wife by banning Farrah from leaving. To which she had said in English: 'No wonder this country's such a dump with people like you running it.'

With his wife in tears, Farrah had left. Mother and daughter had flung their arms around each other, reconciled to the inevitable, neither willing to sacrifice more than each already had. Qureshi had hung back in the hall, his pipe full but unlit. Uncoiling herself from Tasneem, Farrah had waved, like a showdancer in an American movie. 'Bye, Dad. Don't be a stranger. I love you. Remember that.'

And all Qureshi could manage was a quick smile and a wave, before retreating into the safety of a flaring match and the smell of freshly lit tobacco. In that moment he wondered whether he should ever have educated his daughter; whether he should have allowed her to grow up in a world of denim jeans and uncovered faces; whether he should have confined her forcibly; whether he had failed his wife; whether Farrah was an example of what his nation should never become.

He whispered the address into the ear of his driver. They retained their elevation, leaving the built-up residential area and the glow of street lights. The driver turned to the right, heading further north towards the Margala Hills. The road deteriorated. The car bumped over potholes hewn out by rain. The headlights lit up a shepherd, who froze for a moment, then bustled his flock to the side of the road, while the car passed.

Only Qureshi's driver of twenty years' service was with him. A sensible military leader, freshly appointed, would be unwise to trust his bodyguards with a meeting so sensitive.

The driver changed down to a lower gear to negotiate a rut. They turned a corner around the edge of a mountain. Qureshi pressed down his window. The air was colder and fresher. He could make out the shape of another car, parked just off the road, and a single, narrow flashlight beam, pointing down to the brown, grassless ground.

'Stop,' said Qureshi softly. 'And cut the engine.' He took his pistol out of the holster, put a round in the breech, but kept the safety catch on. Holding it in his right hand, hanging loosely by his side, he stepped out of the car and moved to the centre of the road. The flashlight ahead went off. On both sides there were static shapes of cattle grazing.

Qureshi walked forward until he saw the shape of a man leaning against the vehicle. He slipped off the safety catch of his weapon. The man opened the door and the interior lamp came on. The man leant inside, putting his face into the light, so Qureshi could see it.

He recognized him as General Wei Guo, the military attache at the Chinese embassy to Islamabad. As far as Qureshi could make out, there was no driver. Guo had driven the four-wheel-drive Cherokee jeep to the spot himself. Guo slipped back out of the car and stood up again. He flared a match, lighting a cigarette, reaffirming his identity to Qureshi.

'General, thank you for coming,' said Qureshi, when he reached the vehicle. He shook his head, as Guo offered him a cigarette, and glanced inside the car to ensure that what he had come for was installed inside. Guo noticed. 'It's there,' he said, in Urdu with a smile. 'I will connect the line for you, then step away, so you have privacy.'

'Complete privacy?' asked Qureshi. He had worked with Guo for too many years for either of them to use diplomatic jargon.

Guo drew on his cigarette. 'From me, yes. I cannot guarantee what General Yan has arranged at the other end. My instinct, however, is that he would not wish anyone to know about this conversation.'

Qureshi put his weapon back in the holster and rested his hand on the bonnet. Guo opened the cover of the glove compartment to reveal a black box with a small screen, a keyboard and a dialling pad. He brought out a wire, with a rubber sucker on the end, pulled it to its full length and attached it to a precise spot on the roof, from which he extracted a metal antenna which looped around on itself. Then from inside the glove compartment, he took a box no bigger than a cigarette packet. Inside it were layers of folded aluminium, which Guo let drop down into a flat circular shape. He attached that to the antenna on the roof, making a small satellite dish.

'The NSA may pick up the actual transmission,' explained Guo. 'But they will not be able to penetrate the scrambler. Voice recognition will be impossible and they will have difficulty in pinpointing the location. Since their analysts are not looking for it, they will probably not even notice it.' A gust of wind struck up, blowing dust across their faces. Guo eyed the dish, satisfied that it swayed well but did not move. He opened the back door, where a telephone receiver was clipped into the back of the seat. Qureshi climbed in, just as the red light flashed silently on the handset. He looked up at Guo, who nodded. 'It's General Yan Xiaodong for you, sir,' he said. Guo slid off the seat, closed the door of the car and walked some way away, until his figure blended with the darkness.

Qureshi waited for static and white noise to clear from the line, indicating that the two scramblers had linked up. 'Thank you for speaking to me in these unusual circumstances,' said Qureshi. The last time he had seen Yan was on the steps of the Central Committee building in Zhongnanhai. He had said nothing beyond the formalities one dignitary would say to another. As Qureshi had watched him through the tinted dark glass of his Audi, Yan wore a crooked frown, and a look of genuine puzzlement. But he had given nothing away.

'It's always a pleasure to speak to an old friend,' said Yan. 'And while you may be in an unusual place, I am in my office where one telephone looks no different from any other.'

Qureshi paused, allowing for a delay on the satellite linking. If he read Yan correctly, the 'old friend' reference meant Pakistan still commanded the support of the Chinese military. The office location warned that others were listening in. The fact that Yan agreed to the call indicated that he knew the only topic of conversation was to be Jamie Song's ultimatum.

'You, too, are an old friend,' replied Qureshi, matching the veiled language. 'It has been a difficult half-century. We have fought wars against the same, common enemy. You and I have much shared ground.' He saw the glow of Guo's cigarette end far away from the car. Behind him were the sidelights of his own vehicle. His driver would be watching Guo through a hunting rifle with telescopic infra-red sights. 'I have a problem and am calling to ask for your help,' continued Qureshi.

'I'll do anything I can,' said Yan, switching, like Qureshi, to the personal pronoun.

'I will do everything in my power to maintain the friendship between our nations,' said Yan. 'As you know, my power is limited, but I have one idea that might be successful.'