The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

27

'Delay them, will you, John?' asked West.

'I can move them on fifteen minutes,' said Kozerski, gathering his files together at the end of his daily morning meeting with the President.

'That'll do,' said West, pensively. 'And, John, let's make that an undisturbed slot.' He briefly slumped back in his chair, then drew himself upright again.

'Jim, are you OK?' asked Kozerski, halfway out the door.

'I'm fine,' smiled West reassuringly. 'I need to make a couple of personal phone calls, that's all.' Before Kozerski could object, he added: 'To family, John. Not for fund-raising.'

With his Chief of Staff gone, West moved to his working office off the Oval Office, which was mainly a conference room. After Valerie had died, he had had his office redecorated in harsher, more masculine colours. The psychologists would have had a field day if he'd allowed them in. He had needed something to change, but it wasn't going to be the residence or the entertaining areas which Valerie had painstakingly designed with impeccable taste.

West pulled open a drawer under his desk, unplugged a video mobile from its charger, flipped down one name in the address book and punched in a call. He kept only two numbers programmed in. One was his son Chuck's in Oakland. They talked about once a week now, but never about politics. Chuck thought harshly of the government's policies which had forced him to shut down two depots and lay off hundreds of drivers and staff. The other number was his daughter Lizzie's roaming global mobile, which would find her anywhere in the world.

He sat behind the desk and set up the camera, waiting as Lizzie answered the call. When the screen flickered on, all he could see was her red hair splattered over the tiny lens while she tried to hook up the phone. Lizzie was walking with a weatherboard building behind her and a Chevrolet four-wheel-drive roaring past.

Once clear of hair, her face broke into a huge grin when she saw her father. 'God, Dad, you do choose the best of times,' she said sarcastically, stepping down what looked like a side street, and giving West a sudden and welcome drop in traffic noise. 'But hey, you look like you're about to address the nation. Loosen up, it's me, Lizzie.'

West loved Lizzie like nothing on earth. Lizzie had Valerie's wildness and independence: it was hard not to compare.

'How'd the conference go?' he asked, half-knowing the likely answer. His call had found his daughter in Jamaica, where she had been a keynote speaker on sustainable development. Some of the networks had run a short piece on her berating her father's own policies towards the developing world.

'It was great,' said Lizzie. West could see her secret service agents stepping back to let her talk in private. Word in the service was that an assignment with Lizzie was the best around. She was fun, yet disciplined, and she got to go to interesting places. The only country West had banned her from was Cuba, where the legacy of Fidel Castro teetered on. The US President's vivacious daughter heading there to look at health projects would not have gone down well with his party faithful.

'You should have been here, Dad. You would have got splattered with rotten tomatoes and I could have cleaned you up.' West laughed as Lizzie brushed her hair away from her long neck so she could signal to a car drawing up on her left. 'Give me a couple of minutes,' she shouted to the driver with a smile. 'Dad's on the phone.'

'Lizzie,' said West, as his daughter's attention returned. 'I don't know how to put this, and I don't know if I've ever asked you something like this before—' Even as he spoke, he recognized on the screen a soft sympathy flowing into Lizzie's eyes. Lizzie teased him and cajoled him, but never let issues get in the way of their relationship.

'I know,' she said with glint of mischief. 'You want me to join an oil company.'

'No, not quite,' he said slowly. 'It's getting a little lonely up here. You know, the place is pretty empty. You wouldn't have a couple of days—'

'Oh, my God,' she interrupted, putting her hand up to her mouth. 'I haven't been thinking. I've been so engrossed in the conference. That terrible attack. Everything that's going on. You must be— Forget it. I won't blabber. I'll be on the next plane.' She turned to onlookers whom West couldn't see on the high-definition but tiny phone screen. 'Smile, boys,' she shouted. 'We're going home.' Then in a flash back to her father. 'See you tonight, Dad, and just make sure there's no red meat on the menu.'

He returned the phone to the drawer and locked it. He would never tell anyone, save perhaps Lizzie, but it had been Vasant Mehta, calling him earlier that morning, who had persuaded him to call in his daughter.

The conversation with the Indian leader had begun routinely, but quickly became difficult when West asked Mehta to show restraint towards Pakistan. 'Don't go down that line right now, Jim,' said Mehta. 'I'm too raw for it. I'm in a "you're either with us or with the terrorists" mood.'

'We'll do everything we can to handle Pakistan,' pressed West, trying to wring out a signal that the world was not about to be plummeted towards nuclear brinkmanship. He heard Mehta's sigh down the line.

'It doesn't work like that, Jim,' he said wearily. 'We trusted you with Pakistan after 11 September 2001. We trusted you as President Musharraf passed law after law legitimizing his dictatorship. We trusted you to keep a check on Pakistan's nuclear programme. The United States has let us down on all of those points, and more. We cannot trust you any more. If necessary, we will go it alone. But we would like to have your support in whatever we choose to do to safeguard our borders.'

'I'm with you,' said West. This was not the time to quibble. 'The American people are with you, Vasant. Believe me, we are. But don't take us by surprise.'

'You have my word,' said Mehta, and West thought he was about to end the conversation when Mehta went on. 'Jim, do you have any family with you there in Washington?'

Like most of the newspaper-reading world, West had seen the paparazzi photographs of Geeta Mehta on the ski slopes of St Moritz, and he had chosen not to mention it to the Indian Prime Minister. Mehta and West had only met once when both happened to be passing through London, but they had got on immediately.

In fact, they had shared West's most enjoyable evening since Valerie had died. In Downing Street, Stuart Nolan had dismissed his staff, kicked off his shoes, torn off his tie and opened a bottle of single malt whisky. Lizzie and Meenakshi had both been in Paris at a conference. They had met, liked each other, and when they heard their fathers would be in London, got on the Eurostar and hailed a cab to Downing Street. West had been on a whirl around Europe with Peter Brock and Mary Newman. Nolan played host to them all with his wife Joan. Mehta dropped by around 10 p.m. after a dinner at the High Commission, and no one got to bed until after 2 a.m. It was on that evening that Mehta had confided in West about the loneliness of high office.

'I've got a good staff around me,' answered West, a little too defensively, because Mehta picked him up straight away. 'It might get a bit rocky over the next couple of weeks,' he advised. 'Get Lizzie back there with you. She'll keep your feet on the ground.'

Outside the window, West saw the upright figure of his oldest friend, Peter Brock, wrapped up in a cashmere coat and scarf — both given to him by Valerie as Christmas presents. Brock stomped through a snowstorm, impatiently brushing the flakes off his shoulders as if there were no more to take their place. He needn't have gone outside to get to the West Wing, but he would have wanted the air and the distraction of the cold to freshen his thoughts.

Back in the Oval Office, West flicked on the television. The networks still seemed obsessed with the Yokata tragedy, which kept the political focus on Japan and North Korea. Britain's recapturing of Brunei had fired the public's imagination, but only briefly. The attack on the Indian Parliament caused cries of outrage and comparisons to Nine Eleven. A military takeover in Pakistan was a mere footnote, particularly as no one knew who was running the country. All West knew was that Pakistani Vice-President Javed Bashir Zafar had arrived in Dubai, asking for asylum in Britain and claiming to have been taken from his vice-presidential bedroom at gunpoint.

On his desk were files from Mary Newman and Chris Pierce, both of them read and endorsed by Brock.

Newman had pulled a brilliant diplomatic manoeuvre by persuading the South Koreans to issue a sympathetic statement over the murder in Panmunjom. The killer had, after all, been in South Korean uniform and drew a salary from the government. At the United Nations an agenda was being drawn up for official talks involving the US, China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan and Russia. Newman had got an agreement on the formation of an organization called the East Asian Economic Forum, and installed an extra vote on it by pulling in the bankrupt but compliant government of Mongolia.

Chris Pierce had delivered him a chilling war plan. It involved taking out North Korea's own military strike capability in a period of fifteen minutes. With amazement, West had looked at the ground-penetrating radar images deep inside the missile sites. The mouth of each silo was identified, meaning that the missile guidance could be programmed to strike exactly that spot. On impact, a chemical foam would be released to seep into the mouth and other crevices and gaps left after the explosion. Within three minutes, it would seal as hard as concrete. There would be no way in or out of the bunker.

Pierce would also use a high-intensity firebomb specially designed to warp rail tracks. The purpose would be to destabilize rail-based missile launchers. The bomb would send out explosive dust and liquid, like a detonator, for up to a mile from the target area, depending on the weather conditions and slope of the terrain. A fireball would develop, heating and twisting the railway track and rendering it unusable for up to ten miles in each direction. One aircraft dropping a single guided bomb at intervals of ten miles could easily cripple two hundred miles of track.

According to Pierce's satellite photographs, there were rail links to three missile sites, and tree cover affected only a small section of line. Pierce was convinced that any rail-based missile launch threat could be neutralized in a first strike.

On the border with South Korea, he would use thermobaric bombs at the mouths of the caves which housed aircraft, armoured vehicles and artillery. Devastating shock waves would destroy everything, and everyone, in their path, as they swept through. At high altitude, he would deploy unmanned Global Hawk and Predator surveillance planes, which would call in missile strikes and relay back the successes and failures.

West regarded both his Defense Secretary and his Secretary of State as doing superb jobs, particularly as it was Pierce who wanted peace and Newman who believed in a pre-emptive strike. But still there was no answer to fundamental questions. How to stop the deaths of thousands of Americans in the human wave of North Korean troops that would cross the demarcation line? And how to keep China onside and stop her becoming a formidable enemy? Pierce suggested calling China's bluff, but West was not convinced.

Jenny Rinaldi's voice bounced out of the intercom. 'The Secretary of State is here, Mr President.'

'Thanks, Jenny,' said West. 'What happened to the National Security Advisor? I saw him fighting the snow-storm a couple of seconds ago.'

'He's taking a phone call from Langley. He'll be through in a moment.'

'And the Secretary of Defense?'

'Caught in traffic, but drawing into the driveway now, Mr President. This weather's snarling everything up.'

The door edged open and Mary Newman stepped in, patting down her hair which had been blown about in the wind outside. West was about to speak but he stopped himself when he spotted a flicker of regret cross her face. Her hand hesitated on the handle, before closing the door softly behind her.

Newman smiled, but also cast her eyes down, as if contrite or shy. The President's earlier rebuke had altered the atmosphere of their personal relationship. For a moment it seemed she was guessing how much of his anger lingered; how much he was trying to hide; how much he regretted the way he had spoken to her; how much he thought she deserved it. It was rare that they were alone together, and the Oval Office was not the best setting for picking up the pieces.

'Good morning, Mr President,' she said, lifting up her head. 'Hell of a day out there!'

West stepped out from behind his desk, walked over and clasped both her hands in his. 'Morning, Mary. And you did one hell of a job with your diplomacy. It reminded me why I chose you as my Secretary of State.' He squeezed her hands, let them go, then leant towards her with feigned conspiracy. 'Now, before the others come, what's your gut feeling on India and Pakistan?'

She glanced at him sharply. 'With Zafar in exile, Pakistan is toppy.'

'To say the least,' agreed West.

'India is wounded,' she continued, stepping over to the floor-to-ceiling window at the side of the President's desk. It was being lashed by snowflakes which melted fast, leaving imprints of crystal on the bulletproof glass. 'My gut feeling is to hold back, Mr President.'

'And if India finds evidence of Pakistani—'

Jenny Rinaldi's voice interrupted. 'The National Security Advisor, Mr President, and I see the Secretary for Homeland Security and the Defense Secretary coming down the corridor.'

'—involvement in the attack?' continued West.

'Sure,' said Newman. 'They might. But look at South-East Asia. The last of the rebellions have been put down. Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and the main centres are back in government hands. But a rotten idea has spread there and will keep it dangerous for generations. It's the same idea as has destroyed Pakistan. It has turned people against us all over the world. Pakistan is a viral scab. Scratch it and the disease pours out. In North Korea, there's no virus. Whatever lethal doctrine Park Ho is preaching, it sure as hell isn't infectious.'

John Kozerski opened the door to let in West's inner circle, then stepped in himself and closed the door.

'Chris,' said West, before anyone had settled. 'What's your take on Pakistan and India?'

'You won't want to hear it, Mr President,' said Pierce, heading for the warm pot on the coffee table.

'One for me, too, Chris,' said Peter Brock, perching himself on the arm of a sofa. 'Before you answer that,' he said, 'I have an update on Pakistan. Yes, Zafar has been overthrown. Surprise, surprise. The man who has taken over is Air Vice-Marshal Tassudaq Qureshi.' Brock flipped open a folder he had with him and laid it on his knees. 'He's fifty-six years old, five children aged between nineteen and eleven. A career air force pilot. He pioneered the testing of Pakistani aircraft for the toss bomb technique of delivering a tactical nuclear weapon. Never been used yet, thank God,' he added, peering over his glasses. 'After Qureshi stopped flying, he became involved in negotiations with China and North Korea on upgrading Pakistan's missile arsenal. He is a practising Muslim. He prays five times a day and doesn't drink, but he is also — how should I put it — a man of the world. He is good company, intelligent and versatile in conversation. There are no political writings or speeches that we can pin on him. His views have been gathered mainly from human intelligence reports compiled by those who have met him. He is not a fundamentalist in the terms we understand it. But he believes Islam should be the bedrock of Pakistani society. I offer you this quote from the International Institute of Strategic Studies conference in Singapore in 2002. "We have muddled along for too long. There needs to be a showdown so that we can start again. Only after that can we move forward."

'My assessment of the man,' continued Brock, 'is that he is pragmatic rather than ideological or emotional. If he is set on creating an Islamic state in the fashion of Iran, then he might be a very difficult man to deal with.' Brock snapped shut the folder, slid himself into the sofa and took the cup of coffee which had been poured for him by Pierce.

'Is there anything that links him to the assassination of President Khan or the attack on the Indian Parliament?' asked Tom Patton, interested to know if any of those actions were likely to be transferred to American soil.

'Not specifically,' said Brock. 'But he is a part of the machine which must in some way have been responsible for both.'

'And he's the beneficiary,' mumbled Pierce.

'All right then,' said West. 'Since you kicked off, Pete, tell us your assessment of the overall situation.'

'A couple of other difficulties have been discovered,' said Brock, looking directly across to West. 'Zafar was deposed while Qureshi was out of the country. And where was he? According to the Indians, the new leader of Pakistan was in North Korea and then China, from where he was flown to Islamabad on an Air China Boeing 747–400 with a complement of Chinese special forces soldiers.'

'Shit,' said West.

'Exactly,' said Brock. 'We might ask what the hell is going on.' He pulled out another sheet of paper from the file. 'Except — again from the Indians — Jamie Song apparently read him the riot act. Deliver those responsible for the attack on the Indian Parliament to Beijing or China severs its military relationship with Pakistan.'

'And what would that mean?' asked West.

'In the short term, Pakistan couldn't wage a war. No supplies. No spare parts. Its new fighter plane is made in Xian, central China, for example. No new fighter planes.'

'And the long term?'

'It'll have to look around for a new army supplier, particularly of nuclear components. Vasant Mehta told Jamie Song he wanted Chinese scientists and technicians out of there within seven days. Song gave Qureshi three days.'

West shook his head and chuckled. 'Jamie Song is a son of a bitch, but I like his style.' He pulled up a hardback chair and sat on it the wrong way round, leaning forward against its back. 'So we have a near-simultaneous military takeover in Pakistan and North Korea and evidence of direct contact between the two. Both nations have rogue missiles. Both have a nuclear capability. And we have circumstantial evidence that North Korea is developing smallpox.' He looked across at the Defense Secretary. 'Chris. Your turn.'

'In a nutshell. We should do with Pakistan what we've done with Afghanistan and Iraq. We use China as an ally in it and leave North Korea alone.'

'Mary?'

'I'd reverse that, Mr President. Go for North Korea and leave South Asia alone.'

'Tom?' said West, working round the sofa, tapping his fingers on the chair.

Patton shifted his huge frame so that he faced West. 'I go with Mary. If we hit Pakistan, there would be a backlash here.' Patton's experience of international affairs was limited. His expertise lay in banging together the heads of America's rival security agencies. 'We have a registered and monitored threat from the Islamic cause. Nothing from the Koreans.'

'Peter?' said West.

'If Jamie Song can handle Qureshi, I suspect he can handle Park Ho. Why should we do anything?' He shrugged. 'Let's wait and see.'

John Kozerski had not yet been consulted and usually the President kept it like that. Kozerski's job was to stay silent, listen, take notes, identify shifts of loyalty, and make sure the White House and the presidency came through unscathed. Kozerski had been West's second choice for the job. The first offer had gone to Brock, who had turned it down, saying his friendship with West was too valuable and his knowledge of day-to-day Washington politics too limited. But Brock found Kozerski for him, a Texan, whom West had never met and knew little about. He was a lawyer, an administrator and a political animal with antennae as sharp as anything produced by Pentagon technicians. 'You don't want a friend,' Brock had said. 'You need someone to tell you when you're being dumb and someone who'll stay with you through the storms.'

Kozerski had turned out to be straight-talking and unflappable. He kept his family and his private life to himself. The public barely knew who he was and he made it clear that Jim West was his boss, the US President, but not a friend or confidant.

'John,' said West. 'You got a view on this?'

'Fifty-eight Americans are dead because of North Korea, Mr President,' he said slowly. 'You go to war there, you'll get a second term and rid us of a threat to world peace. You pick a fight with Pakistan, no one'll know why you're doing it. If you wait to see what happens next, it takes a gloss off the leadership element of your charisma.'

West tilted forward on the chair. 'I like Jamie Song, but he runs a nation which one day will be at odds with our own. Like you said, Pete, what the hell is going on with Qureshi in North Korea one day, China the next, then coming back to overthrow a civilian government, but melting back into the shadows and not even declaring himself President? He needs more than a damn riot act read to him. Vasant Mehta of India is a friend and an ally. India is a democracy. If he needs my help, I have to give it to him. We should get a treaty going with India, just like we have with Japan. If there is evidence that this new bunch of generals in Pakistan had anything to do with the attack on their parliament, they should be hit and hit hard. So, Mary, tell me why we shouldn't?'

Newman's face clouded with reservation. Of all those in the room, she came across as the thinker, someone who would question her own beliefs at every stage of the way. It was what she had been doing in every telephone call to a foreign leader, in reading every editorial of a foreign newspaper. She took off her spectacles. Sometimes her face was unreadable. Sometimes it expressed a haunting vulnerability, as was happening now, which was part of her attraction for West. She picked up a bottle of mineral water, unscrewed the cap, poured a glass and sat back with it on her lap.

'The terror attack was on India, not on the United States. India is a powerful democracy. If it decides to punish Pakistan, then it must be allowed to do so without our interference. There is no threat from Pakistan to the United States. They do not have the military capability to hit us. The neat assassination of their leader might have thrown the nation into the hands of the politically irresponsible. But we should — as Pete said — delegate any action to India.

'North Korea, on the other hand, has a proven capability of being able to attack United States' facilities. It may even have developed a missile that can reach Hawaii or our western coastline. If we do not rid North Korea of Park Ho, Japan will carry out its threat to militarize. China will react and you have the scenario for a regional conflict.'

'As if you don't have a regional conflict in South Asia?' interjected Pierce.

'It has been going on for sixty years, Chris,' Newman shot back. 'Everyone knows the ground rules. On the Korean peninsula, we don't even want to get to the stage of setting ground rules.'

'What Mary's forgotten, though,' pressed Pierce, addressing the room as if Newman wasn't there, 'is that Pakistan is do-able. North Korea is not — without high casualties.'

'I don't think the President is asking for what's possible,' retorted Newman. 'He wants to know what should be done.'

'What should be done is the neutralizing of Pakistan,' answered Pierce brusquely. 'They have a nuclear weapon which is coveted by the fundamentalist Islamic world. On each change of government, those weapons get closer to the hands of terrorists. And now we have to factor in the probability that North Korea is transferring the long-range Taepodong-2 missile to Pakistan as well. That could give them a strike range to Europe.'

'You mean we should go into Pakistan?' asked West.

'We should neutralize their nuclear and long-range capability, Mr President. I can give you half a dozen options how to do it, starting with Kahuta.'

'Kahuta?' queried West, looking across at his Defense Secretary.

'Their nuclear research and reprocessing plant. Take out Kahuta and you cripple their nuclear capability.'

'Single strike?'

'Absolutely.'

'Then why don't we let India do it?' suggested West, half smiling. He motioned over to Brock. 'Delegation seems to be today's catchword.'

Newman's eyes flamed. 'No, Mr President. No. We have to let the wounds heal, and India is too inflamed to be allowed to act on its own. It needs help.'

The President slapped his hands on his knees and broke out into a chuckle, taking everyone aback. They didn't know that Lizzie was on her way to Washington, and West was surprised how much that one telephone call had lifted his spirits.

'What gets me is this,' he said. 'Mary believes we should intervene in North Korea. Chris believes it would be a catastrophe. Chris wants to go into Pakistan. Mary says "hold back". Yet each of you has written the summary plan on how to execute the other's point of view. You know, one day I'll make a speech on this, because it's your flexibility of intellect that has made this the greatest nation on earth.'

West paused for moment, reflecting. 'Now, I just want to finish up with Mary, because as Chris says North Korea is a high-risk venture. Take me deeper into your thoughts, Mary.'

For one harrowing instant, as she brushed her fringe out of her eyes, she wondered if she should go down the road Jim West had thrown open to her. The memories of her rebuke at an earlier session were still fresh. The President wore a weatherproof smile on his face. The others waited like statues.

'The sad truth is,' she began, unable to stop herself swallowing hard. 'We know what happens when tyrants, dangerous tyrants, are left to their own devices, and left unchallenged. We know what happens when democracies cannot make a decision to act. We know what happens when international institutions are defied and don't act. We have a history with that and it is never good; a lot of innocent people end up suffering.'

Peter Brock was looking down at the notes on his lap. Chris Pierce's lips were parted in an indecipherable yet ghostly smile. Tom Patton stared at some far-off place outside in the snow. John Kozerski's eyes flitted between her and the President, who himself had barely moved. She pressed on.

'Park Ho believes he can win because he doesn't think we will act. He believes the hype about the hatred around the world for the United States. He thinks that Afghanistan, Iraq, the War on Terror have left us with an exposed flank, that there is a flood tide of loathing which we should ignore at our peril. Park Ho, closeted in his madness in North Korea, thinks that those governments which are our closest allies will turn against us. He believes they are deeply suspicious of us — which they are, Mr President, except Park Ho believes that that suspicion could be turned into a strategic alliance against us. He is probably on the phone right now telling big hitters like Jamie Song and Andrei Kozlov that he can start the ball rolling to end the world of the lone superpower. To Song, Kozlov and anyone else from Cuba to Libya to Iran who'll listen to him. He's probably boasting that finally there's a guy out there with the balls to drop a missile on an American base. Not a terror bomb, but a missile from sovereign soil. And those leaders have problems with their own people. They are suspicious of us. They do loathe us. There is envy. And there is something deeper, too — a belief that the path of following the United States is a path to damnation. They simply do not want their own societies to go in that direction. We are no longer their role model — if we ever have been.'

She glanced at West's face, and there was a hint that she was breaking through. In John Kozerski's eyes was a glimmer of respect and Pierce's smile had faded.

'Park Ho might be a fly-by-night. He might be dead in a month. But he'll have opened a can of worms, Mr President, about our power, our loyalty and our legitimacy. He is a direct and real threat. The only one, Mr President, that I can see facing us at the moment.'

'Why are you asking me not to accept China's offer?' asked Vasant Mehta bluntly on the hotline to the White House. 'Is it because it won't work, or because it erodes your own influence? Jamie Song has made an offer to take the terrorists out of Pakistan. No one else has, so what's your problem?'

Jim West shot a look across to Peter Brock. He had been told this would be an easy call to make. Something had dramatically changed. 'That's not what I meant, Vasant. I asked if you wanted to have the tape checked against voice verification with our people. We have the equipment to do it. You don't.'

'Thank you, but no.'

West breathed deeply. 'All right. Then — assuming it is genuine — what happens if Qureshi does not deliver? Does that mean you will invade?' West held up a satellite photograph in front of the camera, so that Mehta could see it. 'This was taken yesterday, Vasant. You are piling artillery, tanks and troops into the Punjab. You're moving aircraft from your eastern airfields to those closest to the Pakistan border.' Brock handed him another image. 'You've got big guns up there that could hit Lahore. Everything here points to an invasion of Pakistan.'

The satellite link faltered and the whiff of a shadow distorted Mehta's face. The screen shuddered. When it recovered, Mehta was leaning away from it, the camera showing the back of his head and the blurred background of his office. Then he reappeared holding up a CD-ROM in his hand. 'This is the interrogation of the terrorist who survived the attack,' said Mehta. 'You can have it. I'm sure he's on your files. You can match his fingerprints and voice signature.'

'Can you give me the crux of what he says?' said West, cautiously. Brock moved closer to the speaker phone. John Kozerski hung back by the door, a notepad in one hand and turning a ballpoint pen in the other.

'Before they were deployed, the terrorists were briefed by a senior Pakistani officer,' said Mehta.

'Qureshi?'

Mehta smiled and shook his head. 'No. It was Najeeb Hussain. It was Qureshi who ordered the assassination of Khan. But we can't pin the attack on the Parliament on him.'

'What a goddamn mess!' muttered West, his eyes leaving the screen for a second to look to Brock for advice. The National Security Advisor shrugged and mouthed his reply that the President should keep listening.

'Qureshi is now the de facto president,' agreed Mehta. 'But Hussain put him there. When Qureshi stepped off the plane from China he was told he was the new military leader. To have refused would have meant a bullet in the head.' The video link could not hide Mehta's fatigue. He rubbed his hand round his chin, then suddenly sat upright and stabbed his finger towards the camera.

'You have to be with us on this, Jim. Listen to the interrogation. Hear the evidence, and always remember that India is a democracy. Pakistan is a dictatorship. Don't be neutral. If I decide to go in and destroy that nation, India expects your unquestioning support.'

With the conversation over, black and white lines flitted across the screen. Kozerski stepped over and turned it off. West turned to Brock who was staring out of the window, where a grey winter's evening was closing in early, accompanied by a swirl of rain. He stepped over to the window to join Brock, but it was Kozerski who spoke. 'If I may, Mr President,' he said, taking advantage of the silence.

'Sure, John,' said West.

'The Indian community in the United States is the single biggest immigrant economic grouping. Whatever decision you take, you should talk to them, get them on board and pay them some attention. Make them understand they are Americans first and Indians second.'

West knew he could only ignore Kozerski's political antennae at his peril. He glanced sharply across at his Chief of Staff. 'You saying we might end up on different sides of the fence?'

'That's what it sounded like to me,' said Kozerski. 'Your voice gave you away, that's all.'

Brock turned back into the room. 'I can't think of any nation, apart from the United States, that has succeeded in overthrowing a regime by force since the Soviets went into Afghanistan in 1979.'

'Either Mehta is calling everyone's bluff,' said West, 'or he believes he can win.'

'He can win,' said Brock. 'But it would take nuclear weapons to do it.'

'The decision is easy,' said West, glancing first to Kozerski and then to Brock. 'We can't let Mehta go into Pakistan.'