The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

41

The dining room of the Prime Minister's official residence in Delhi was a charred shell, giving off odours of disinfectant, tar and other building chemicals. A tarpaulin stretched over the roof had become loose. Its edges flapped in the wind, and men shouted at each other from ladders, trying to secure it. It was the first breeze Delhi had had for some days, and with no rain the city had been left under a dome of pollution which stuck in Meenakshi's throat, making her lungs feel tight. She leaned her walking stick against the wall in the hallway and, keeping clear of the walls, she managed to take a few steps, stopped to absorb the pain, then moved on again towards her father's study.

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.'